Minister in Prime Minister’s
Department Datuk Paul Low should perhaps do his homework first before
attempting to “justify” Malaysia’s poor rankings in the Revenue Governance
Index Report
Paul
Low should read the Revenue Watch Institute (RWI) 2013 report first before
defending the Barisan Nasional government of their inability in resource
governance, which is clearly shown by the Malaysia’s poor ranking in the
report’s Resource Governance Index (RGI).
In
responding to the poor ranking, Paul Low was reported saying that it is because
the disclosure of overseas agreements make up a "big item" in the
index and Petronas has to respect the host government’s requests for
non-disclosure while doing operation overseas. This excuse given is contrary to
that stated in the RGI report.
Firstly,
I would like to remind Paul Low that Petronas is not the only state oil company
(SOC) that has operations overseas. Petrobras, which is the state oil company
for Brazil, has operations in 24 countries, similar to the number of countries
Petronas is operating, which is 22 countries. Brazil too is a developing
country. However, our performance in resource governance as reported by RWI is
very different - Brazil stands tall at 5th with overall RGI score of
80/100 while Malaysia at 34th at a dismal 46/100. Hence it is clear
that overseas agreements does not at all impede resource governance and
transparency.
Secondly
and more importantly, the disclosure of overseas agreement is not a ‘big item’
in the index. The index assesses the quality of four key governance components:
i. Institutional and Legal Setting, ii. Reporting Practices, iii. Safeguards
and Quality Controls and iv. Enabling Environment. There are indicators under
each component.
The
indicators that we scored zero, i.e. the causes of the poor ranking, are
freedom of information law, EITI (Extractive Industries Transparency
Initiative) participation, 4 subnational transfer related indicators,
contracts, subsidies, operating company names, fund rules, government
disclosure of conflicts of interest, SOC disclosure of conflicts of interest,
checks on fund spending, fund disclosure of conflicts of interest.
Most
of the above are related to disclosure of operation and business activities
within Malaysia and none of them is related to overseas agreement disclosure.
Perhaps the new Transparency Minister could advise us on how the “overseas
agreement” factor is actually a “big item” as to why Malaysia fared badly in
the RGI?
We do not expect Datuk Paul Low to be responsible for the past mistakes
done by the BN Government. We do expect him to give solutions for greater
transparency for the future. However, he appeared to have assimilated into the
past BN culture of denial syndrome – that is to “deny first” and face the
consequences later.
We call upon Datuk Paul Low not to become an apologist for the BN
administration. He should study the RGI
report in detail, review all criticisms and propose all necessary transparency
reforms needed for the Petronas Development Act to make Malaysia a shining
example of good governance in the world.
