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By Little Bird

The Economic Corridors are just a farce. They are not happening. This is the view of the highest ranking senior staff at the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) in the Prime Minister's Department. Here are some facts provided by them.

Malaysia is held in high esteem for carefully planning the development of the country through the five-year development plans. The Ninth Malaysia Plan (RMK9) was officially launched on 31 March 2006. The RMK9 was launched after hundreds of rounds of meetings with industry groups, Government Ministries and thousands of pages of reports, studies and consultants views. It took almost two years to put the RMK9 together. The RMK9 envisaged an investment of approximately RM280 billion, spread over the whole country over five years. This averages about RM56 billion expenditure per year.

In stark contrast, the Iskandar Development Region (IDR) in Johor went from announcement to non-implementation in just three months. The Prime Minister suddenly said that he had thought up the IDR Corridor all by himself. There were no inputs from the Economic Planning Unit of the PM's office. There is a simple reason for this. The EPU does not exist any more. Its staff has been reassigned and it is now a cold storage department at the PM's office.

The RM300 billion for the IDR was also a complete surprise because this number was derived in a matter of weeks without any studies being done, without the long meetings and discussions that are necessary to put a multi-billion Ringgit plan into operation. However, before the shocked Government planners could close their mouths, the Prime Minister announced RM140 billion for the Northern Corridor and RM120 billion for the Eastern Corridor.

For these subsequent launches, they did not even have the time to coin the proper names for the corridors. The ECER was originally touted as the WEPT or Wilayah Ekonomi Pantai Timur. But on the launching day, the PM's new wife 'John' pinched the PM and said WEPT means 'sudah menangis'. That was not very nice so they changed it to ECER.

Then, towards the end of 2007, the PM received phone calls that he had forgotten about Sabah and Sarawak. Oops, said the PM. So off he went to Sabah and Sarawak. In the record time of less than eight weeks, the SCORE (Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy) was launched at RM350 billion. The Sabah Corridor is expected to involve another RM200 billion.

Taken together, all these corridors total RM1,110 billion or RM1.11 trillion. Even if we are off by RM110 billion, it still adds up to RM1,000 billion or RM1.0 trillion.

In the meantime, the RMK9 has been completely forgotten. The RMK9 is now due for its mid-term review in 2008. But there is nothing to report because the RMK9 has been shelved. Some 8th Malaysia Plan (RMK8) projects which were postponed and included in the RMK9 have been completed. But according to the EPU none of the projects in the RMK9 have even been started yet.

In the 1990s, multinational engineering firms, Japanese bankers, consultants and all sorts of private investors found their way to Malaysia looking to take part in the development of the country. Throughout 22 years in power, Dr Mahathir spent less than RM50 billion to build the KLCC (RM2 bil), North-South Highway (RM4 bil), KLIA (RM4 bil), Putrajaya (RM14 bil), F1 Racing (RM370 Million), LRT (RM3 bil), etc.

But this time, despite RM1.11 trillion worth of Development Corridors, there are no foreigners coming in a big way to invest here. No foreign investors are rushing to come to Malaysia to take a crack at the RM1.11 trillion development corridors. They know that these numbers are all fake.

And true enough, none of the Development Corridors are being developed with any speed. Tan Sri Musa Hitam has been appointed Overlord of the IDR and Dato Anuar Zaini has been appointed Maharaja of the Northern Corridor. Dato Awang Dogoi may be appointed the Daimyo of the ECER while Dato Bujang anak Kapit may be appointed Temenggong of the Sarawak Development Corridor. None of them has an office space at any of these Corridors.

No one knows what these Corridor bosses will be doing but it is expected that they will have powers superseding local District Officers and other State authorities. They will report direct to the PM's SIL and his team on the 4th Floor of the PM's office. Since land is still a State matter this arrangement is expected to cause much confusion. But not to worry because the PM is not losing any sleep over any of these things.

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