KUALA LUMPUR: The Secretariat for the Rationalisation Study of Federal Statutory Bodies should look into lower hanging fruits and those that spend the most first in its efforts to cut down on government spending.
Economist Dr Geoffrey Williams said the secretariat should adopt a multifaceted strategy, addressing both smaller statutory bodies that can be easily rationalised and larger ones.
This approach, he said, allows for "quick wins" from "low-hanging fruit" and can yield significant savings in a short period.
"There are around 135 statutory bodies, including public universities, and many more agencies and subsidiary entities that could be rationalised.
"Entities such as the Federal Land Development Authority (Felda), Majlis Amanah Rakyat (Mara), and the National Higher Education Fund Corporation (PTPTN) are particularly large in financial terms.
"There are numerous overlaps, redundancies, and functions that should be transferred to the private sector through responsible privatisation," he said when contacted.
Williams said reforming statutory bodies was crucial, given that there are so many.
For the rationalisation, he said all of the public universities should be taken out of the statutory bodies group as part of a major rationalisation of higher education.
"It is perfectly viable to do this and also necessary to improve the efficiency of government not just to save money but to improve governance and public services.
"There has to be a full cost-benefit analysis and a proper assessment of how to deal with the rationalisation process to achieve the best results," he added.
Williams said the most significant savings would come from changing management approaches to reduce losses due to wastage, leakages, corruption, and poor investment management, which have cost tens of billions across all statutory bodies.
"For instance, the Auditor General's Report showed that Felda lost RM1 billion in 2022 alone and owed RM8.8 billion to external institutions.
"There are also potential revenue options if some of the statutory bodies are privatised.
"This reduction in losses and possible revenue from responsible privatisation can be used to cut government debt which reduces debt finance costs and releases this money for priorities such as education, health and social protection," he said.
Earlier today, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said the government has set up a secretariat to overcome administrative issues and those related to the country's expenses.
He said there were too many statutory bodies, and their functions overlap, which complicates operations.
Meanwhile, political economist Dr Edmund Terrence Gomez said the secretariat should merge statutory bodies which have similar functions and look into entities that are not focusing on their core duties such as those who were focusing on doing businesses through government-linked companies.
"The duty of statutory bodies is to play a role intervening in the economy to solve a social or economic problem. Its purpose is not to go into business.
"For example the Central Terengganu Development Authority (Ketengah) was set up to bring about rural economic activities among people in the agriculture sector.
"They did a very good job. They helped promote the development of agro industries in rural areas. Now, to get them to be more self-sufficient, the government told them to go into business and set up GLCs.
"Now, if you go down to the ground and talk to the people, they would say that they are setting up companies which are now competing with them. How is that possible?"