State Government Link Companies – Past Performance and Future Challenges

Development efforts involve various approach and mechanisms. Thus, government involvement in corporate companies is part and parcel towards the accomplishment of state and citizens’ development goal. The State Government also make huge investments in various corporate companies that have important impact on the level of the state socio- economic development. Starting May 2004, reformation efforts have seen improvement in the Federal Government link companies’ (GLCs) performance. However, the reformation program is limited to 15 main GLCs belonging to the Federal Government through its five parent entities. Thus, this article looks into the role of the State Government link companies (SGLC) with a view to project the relevance of SGLCs within the context of Malaysia’s current development. The study is to propose the extension of the reformation efforts to state GLCs as currently implemented by the Federal owned GLCs. In the article the past refers to the years that the state parent entities were established, that is in 1960s until the year 2003. While the current and future periods include the year federal GLCs reformation program started, that is 2004 until 2007. The discussion shows that SGLC are still relevant in Malaysia’s current development context and efforts similar to that of the Federal Government GLCs should be undertaken to improve them. However, in order to strengthen the SGLCs performance it must start with recognising the problem of Two Face Organisation and to find solution to overcome it.