KUALA LUMPUR: Bumiputera Agenda Steering Unit (Teraju) believes there is still room to further grow Bumiputera companies despite having helped some 1,000 companies to gain sales of up to RM40 billion annually.
Hence, Teraju was making a shift to a more centralised approach in generating ideas for empowering the Bumiputera economic agenda with its soon-to-be established special lab, said chief executive officer Datuk Husni Salleh.
He said 76 per cent of the some 1,000 Bumiputera companies it assisted had grown faster than their related industries.
“We will collaborate more with ministries, government-linked companies, non-governmental organisations and businesses to centrally test ideas and analyse their impact on the Bumiputera economy at the special lab.
“We will then refine each key performance indicator (KPI) and programme implemented previously. At the lab, we will come up with more meaningful KPIs that can have a bigger impact on the Bumiputera economic agenda.
“We are also evaluating the effectiveness of our programmes by getting an independent view,” he told NST Business, here.
The lab is part of the second wave (2015-2017) of Teraju’s 2020 roadmap to transform the Bumiputera economy.
Husni said Teraju planned to expand its flagship programmes, such as Superb and Teras, this year to more participants after five years of pilot testing.
“This is how the lab functions. We will get more ideas on how to make our programmes better. However, we will stick to the concept of pitching and competition. The concept will be applied to other programmes as well.”
Husni said Teraju would also introduce two programmes that focused on capability- and capacity-building to encourage Bumiputera entrepreneurs to be involved in the export market, especially in the Asean region and China.
“We will collaborate with several parties to execute the programmes. We are now in the final phase of negotiations.”
Husni said the Bumiputera agenda was not racist and stressed that its economic impact should benefit people from all walks of life.
“The agenda is important because 80 per cent of low-income earners are the Bumiputera. The government’s intention is to ensure that economic balance can be carried out by not taking any economic holdings of the non-Bumiputera,” he added.