Malaysia Money Matters

It was bound to happen eventually - the lax way the government wastes money, leakages everywhere and so on. In the long run, this downgrade is probably a good thing. It is a wake up call that we have to DO SOMETHING concrete to move our economy to the next step! Off the top of my head, with but a stroke of a pen, the government should: Impose GST - not just to broaden the tax base but to create more oversight into businesses; lets face it, there's way too much cooking of the books. How can business tax be almost equal to personal income tax? (Govt tax revenue sources by petroleum: business: personal is roughly 33:35:32) Shut down / tightly control the money changers and remittance houses - they are the key channel for fund leaving the country under the radar. Banks have to monitor and report to Bank Negara on fund flows but these organisations don't have to. Why? And it's already proven that funds from corruption by politicians have left the country this way. So ...

The other day, I was presented with an investment opportunity in a small oil field in North America. The returns are guaranteed and paid quarterly. The premise of which is that it is a proven oil field, already tapped out of easy oil, so by using a new process which they couldn't tell me what it was but I suspect it is fracking. The proposition is very attractive, no doubt but in light of all these investment cases being in the media lately, such as the Gennova gold investment (don't know if it was really a scam, ponzi scheme or just a case of not getting their paperwork done correctly?), I'm rather sceptical. Finally, it came out that the program has not yet received its certification to be sold to investors yet, so I was not too pleased to have wasted my time on being pitched something that is not approved. Commercial bankers are like that one la.. very compliance focused, you know! LOL Anyway, lets see how it goes, am still interested in it as it is a fairly sh...