Top 20 companies – two different lists on racial breakdown of corporate share ownership

The Finance Ministry has given two different lists on the racial breakdown of corporate share ownership of the top 20 companies with the highest market capitalization in the Malaysian bourse, raising serious questions about the reliability, credibility and integrity of official statistics and tables.

This has just been discovered by the DAP MP for Seputeh, Teresa Kok who on Monday had asked an oral question to the Minister of Finance “to list the 20 companies with the highest market capitalization in the Malaysian Bourse and to state the market capital for each company and the share control according to race”.

Teresa’s question was listed No. 7 on the Order Paper, but when she got up to ask it, it was already passed the question hour between 10 am to 11 am. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Finance Ministry, Dr. Hilmi Yahya, who was answering for the Finance Minister, read out the list of the 20 top Malaysian companies but not the details asked for, saying that he would give them to Teresa as a written answer in view of the fact that time had run out.

Many press the next day published Hilmi’s answer together with the table of details Teresa had asked for, which was why Teresa had not checked the written answer of the same question which she had received.

It was only this morning (at about 11 am) that she was informed by a market analyst who had studied the table as published in the Star yesterday (26.9.05) that the written answer which Teresa had been given was very different from that published in the newspapers.

The implications of the two different lists are very far-reaching, particularly in the national controversy sparked by the UMNO Youth demand for the revival of the New Economic Policy revolving round the NEP target of 30 per cent bumiputra share of corporate stock ownership.

The nub of the controversy is whether the target of 30% equity share for bumiputras had been achieved by the end of the 20-year NEP in 1990, if the bumiputras had not sold off their share ownerships from bumiputra quotas for quick capital gain and the shares held by nominee companies which were mainly bumiputra interests had been taken into consideration.

What is disconcerting from the two lists, both issued by the Finance Ministry, is the lumping of Khazanah holdings as part of non-bumiputra shares, which gives a completely distorted picture about ethnic breakdown of corporate share ownership.

A serious breach of privilege is involved in giving a very misleading answer to Teresa, apart from the fact that the list she got is very different from the list given out and published by the media.

Teresa will be pursuing the issue to demand that Hilmi be referred to the Committee of Privileges.