PUTRAJAYA: Bursa Malaysia chairman Tan Sri Abdul Wahid Omar said only one out of 97 listed companies in the past three years is owned by Bumiputera.
Wahid said this reflects the actual participation of the Bumiputera in the business sector and serves as a wake-up call that this is the real situation.
"So, we must ask ourselves, if it has been six decades since we implemented various policies to empower the Bumiputera, what is the result today?
"Why have we yet to reach our target all this time?" he questioned when speaking at the Bumiputera Economic Congress at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre.
The former minister in the Prime Minister's Department attributed the 'main cause of the failure' to the Bumiputera business players' tendency to target the public sector instead of the private sector.
"The public sector may contribute to our country's economy, but it is still evolving. There is greater participation from the private sector.
"In terms of our economy, the public sector contributes only 17.8 per cent to our economy whereas the private contributed 76.2 per cent," he said, adding that the private sector is 4.3 times larger than the public sector.