Of vultures and weird partners
Startups have a government champion but can he move the needle?
Today’s newsletter is a postscript to Retirement Fund Inc’s (KWAP) exposure to the eFishery scandal that I had sitting in my draft for sometime.
I planned on attaching this morning’s brief together with a few other columns on our “amazing” government-linked entities.
These days, however, done is better than perfect.
You’re reading a paid version of The Malaysianist, a newsletter on money and power by writer and journalist Emmanuel Samarathisa.
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Let’s set the stage: government-linked investment companies (GLICs) and government-linked companies (GLCs) are under pressure to perform.
That’s nothing new, but the question is always which screws are being tightened.
One of the latest directives they have to get on board with is PM Anwar Ibrahim’s GearUp policy.
This initiative brings together six GLICs — Khazanah Nasional, the Employees Provident Fund (EPF), Retirement Fund Inc (KWAP), Permodalan Nasional Bhd (PNB), Lembaga Tabung Haji (LTH), and the Armed Forces Fund Board (LTAT) — to push investments into “high-growth, high-value industries”.
To make this happen, the government wants GLICs to invest in tech and has earmarked RM120 billion from their own books.
From what I’m hearing, there’s friction. Sources in the Finance Ministry say getting these GLICs to work together has been a challenge – whether it’s negotiating a joint overseas deal or simply agreeing on policy execution.