{"id":2544,"date":"2008-11-09T19:05:36","date_gmt":"2008-11-09T11:05:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/indian\/2008\/11\/09\/government-agrees-in-principle-for-pnb-mechanism\/"},"modified":"2008-11-09T19:11:33","modified_gmt":"2008-11-09T11:11:33","slug":"government-agrees-in-principle-for-pnb-mechanism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/indian\/2008\/11\/09\/government-agrees-in-principle-for-pnb-mechanism\/","title":{"rendered":"Government agrees in principle for PNB mechanism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another glimmer of success is in sight after the PM and his deputy agreed “in principle” to MIC’s proposal (actually many other people suggested this idea as well especially via media and forums, but never mind, we give the honor to MIC) to set up a mechanism under Permodalan Nasional Bhd<\/a> (PNB) to increase the equity ownership among Indians in the country by three per cent in 2020, from the current 1.2 per cent.<\/p>\n

According to Samy Vellu:<\/p>\n

…the matter was agreed to by both Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and his deputy, Dauk Seri Najib Tun Razak, who is also finance minister, when he met the two leaders recently.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe special mechanism to be set up under PNB will use a similar model as the one used to assist the bumiputera community.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have asked the government to set aside an allocation as a form of partial grant and loan to be given to the Indians under the said mechanism,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another success due to Makkal Sakthi I guess – MIC becoming a bit more relevant and improving a bit on their achievements. Perhaps they will even surpass their past 20 years achievement in the next one year itself.<\/p>\n

But I still believe that it should be set at 10%, not 3%. Together with the grants and loans, the recipients should also be provided with some education and awareness on what are they getting into. No point the recipient getting RM1000 worth of units, but selling it off the next day to cover his\/her daily expenses.<\/p>\n

If can, the units may be linked to some sort of insurance scheme as well.<\/p>\n

If done properly, this can be one of the channels to improve the financial status of the poor and underprivileged. However, it must be stressed that providing equity sharing is not enough. It will be falsity to think that the problems faced by the community will go away by giving RM500 million per year (yup, I’m expecting nothing less than that!) in loans and grants. There must be some fail-safe mechanism the amount is not misused by middlemen like MIC, or the recipients themselves. For example, we can put a 3 year “no sell back” clause.<\/p>\n

Secondly, how to ensure the correct people get the help? As it is, even the poor and underprivileged are not properly tracked by Welfare Department, so what database are the authorities going to use? How about a list from KWSP? Take the employees of estates, public utilities providers, factories. The government’s employees list can also be obtained. From there, filter those who are earning XXX or less per month. This will be a start, but it would not include self-employed or the unemployed (like housewives).<\/p>\n

While waiting the “agreement in principle” to be realised, better some think tanks start their research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another glimmer of success is in sight after the PM and his deputy agreed “in principle” to MIC’s proposal (actually many other people suggested this idea as well especially via media and forums, but never mind, we give the honor to MIC) to set up a mechanism under Permodalan Nasional Bhd (PNB) to increase the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[115,84,24,154],"class_list":["post-2544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-indian","tag-economy","tag-funds","tag-mic","tag-poverty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2544"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2546,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2544\/revisions\/2546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}