KUALA LUMPUR – The government will consider working together with industries on green energy transition areas by giving incentives in the form of structured financing instead of subsidies, said Economy Minister Rafizi Ramli.
He said any form of government assistance to industries must be structural in nature, which could uplift their competitiveness and robustness in the long run, rather than providing continuous subsidies without any structural changes.
“This is going to be the government’s approach sector by sector, and hopefully, by doing that, it will expedite technology growth, create more jobs and enhance digitalisation,” he said during the panel session on “Strengthening Economic Resilience and Sustaining Development” at Invest Malaysia 2023 here today.
He said the government would focus not just on the policy framework but be more actively involved with industry players in the form of funding, incentive grants or collaboration, and the Economy Ministry has been talking to various industries on the matter.
Rafizi also said the best practice for digital adoption is through public service, as more than 30 million people deal with the government every day.
He said this matter is already contained in the aspirations of MyDigital to migrate ministries’ data from physical storage to cloud storage, and the government will take a bigger leap forward in the digitalisation process.
“We need to look at the larger picture so that the whole process of government is designed holistically. For example, currently, the forms have been digitised but the processing stays the same whereby government officers will inspect and manage,” he said.
Rafizi said the approach needs to be changed in totality and the government’s processes and procedures should be linked to a centralised database.
Commenting on 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB), Rafizi added that any 1MDB funds recovered would go into a consolidated fund, while monies earmarked for development expenditure would be transferred into a development fund. – Bernama, March 8, 2023
