Conducive business environment is an important factor for enhancing competitiveness of Malaysia. In realising this initiative, Malaysia Productivity Corporation (MPC) has established a Regulatory Review Department in October 2010 to monitor, review and provide recommendations for smart regulation. MPC is targeting to substantially reduce the regulatory burden to businesses. This is indeed no easy task, and a goal of this magnitude involves massive transformation processes across the entire strata of Malaysia’s political, societal and most importantly, economic landscapes.
To make this vision a reality, significant progress has been made in a number of areas such as:
- networking with University of Malaya Malaysian Centre of Regulatory Studies (UMCoRS) and the Australia Government Productivity Commission (AGPC) for technical expertise;
- comprehensive scanning through focus groups and web based surveys to find out which areas of regulation pose problems in terms of productivity including administrative burdens;
- capacity building for selected regulators directly involved in leading National Key Economic Areas (NKEAs);
- regulatory review projects in 2 sectors, namely, Oil, Gas & Energy and Electrical & Electronics sectors;
- benchmarking programmes to complement regulatory review projects in pursuit of more cost-effective and efficient regulation; and
- one-way and two-way exchanges of information to broaden public access to information, build consensus and increase stakeholder awareness on regulatory review