Keng Yaik’s legacy?
Broadband penetration, local content, and liberalising telco industry
May 1, 2006
Before becoming the Minister of Energy, Water and Communication in 2004, Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik manned fort as the Minister for Primary Industries. His tenure took him through the rigorous period of massive development during the late 1980’s and the doldrums of the Asian Financial Crisis. It was his mettle in the palm oil industry that has unquestionably helped ascertain Malaysia’s continued foreign exchange income during those stormy years of the late 1990s. Despite the extended economic gloom, palm oil outshined other commodities in export revenue and provided the country much shelter in managing its fiscal shortfall that seriously impacted the neighbouring countries.
However, sitting in his new ministry where water, energy and communications industries are housed in one, his responsibility tripled. Leaving energy and water industries aside, to what extent is he going to leave behind a legacy that equalled his days spent in primary industries?
Currently, he has a plateful of unresolved issues. Fast-track broadband penetration; propelling the development of content to make broadband pervasiveness relevant; mobile-number portability; faster broadband speeds, operators’ lukewarm response to the registration of prepaid cellular service users. All are in a deadlock. How are to further liberalise the telecommunications industry when the telcos continued to resist the country’s public policies?