The state of regulatory governance in Malaysia

Abstract

This paper attempts to assess the state of regulatory governance in Malaysia based on the primary survey data. There is some evidence that government agencies in Malaysia do carry out some assessment of the impact of regulations, but such practices appear to vary significantly across different ministries, state agencies, and local governments. Furthermore, there appears to be no centralized and concerted effort by any federal agency to adopt international best practices in regulatory governance. This is likely to have adversely impacted the quality and quantity of regulations in Malaysia. The government does recognize the need to improve the quality of regulations in the country. Recent policy reforms have been aimed at strengthening the institutional capacity and implementation capacity of regulation in the country. However, based on findings from the survey, such initiatives are likely to be implemented in a decentralized and possibly, in an ad-hoc manner. A more effective approach to implement regulatory reforms would be in the form of coordinated government-wide programmes, which will then subsequently lead to improve regulatory governance.