Speech by Y.A.B Tan Sri Dato' Hj Muhyiddin Hj Mohd Yassin Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia at The 21st Industry Excellence Awards, 24 October 2012

Thank you for inviting me. Let me say, first of all, ladies and gentlemen, that attending a function like this is a very uplifting experience because we meet here to celebrate success, to acknowledge and recognize the highest achievements of the human spirit.

We have with us this evening some of the most creative and innovative minds in our corporate community, and representatives of some of the most outstanding companies in our country. I join you, ladies and gentlemen, to congratulate them and to say the country is very proud of you.

This year is the 21 st anniversary of the AKI recognition programme . It is perhaps appropriate that we take some time to reflect on what this programme has tried to do, and what progress it has achieved.

When the Government launched the AKI programme in 19 91 , our objective was to promote a culture of excellence among Malaysian companies and to recognize those have achieved outstanding success. Two decades later, these twin objectives have not changed.

But a few other things have. Let me enumerate three of them.

• First, companies taking part in the AKI programme these days are now involved in more complex and sophisticated activities. In the early years, most of them were in low-level manufacturing or the provision of basic services. Today, many of them are high-tech companies, companies engaged in the delivery of sophisticated and complex services in IT, the professions, and so on.

• Second, more private sector companies are now taking part in the AKI programme. In earlier years, many participants were government or government-related companies. The proportion of this sector has come down, and representation from the private sector has increased.

• The third noticeable change has to do with the standards used to judge the competition. I think it is fair to say that these are now much higher and the evaluation process is more rigorous.

We should not be surprised by these developments, ladies and gentlemen. They are a reflection of larger changes that are taking place in our economy. We have moved from basic manufacturing to higher-level manufacturing. We have graduated from the provision of basic services to the provision of more complex services in telecommunications, healthcare, IT, education, and so on. We should not be surprised if in later years we find that AKI participants are coming from still more modern sectors like biotechnology, green technology, nanotechnology, and so on.

I also welcome the participation of more private sector companies in the AKI programme. There is a difference between businesses run by state companies and those run by entrepreneurs. I happen to be of the view that the survival instinct, the hunger to do well and to excel, is keenest and most robust in environments which are entrepreneur-driven. You will agree that it is difficult to find or replicate this kind of entrepreneurial instinct in the operating environment of a state-owned company.

If state companies do well, very often it is because they have resources bestowed on them by the state in the first place – assets such as finance, land, licensing rights and so on. If private companies do well, more often than not it can be attributed to their ingenuity, their entrepreneurship, their determination and their hard work. That is why I say, ladies and gentlemen, every time we see an entrepreneur do well, let us not begrudge him. Instead, let us applaud him and recognise him for what he has achieved. This is the purpose of the AKI programme.

Twenty-one years have gone by since the AKI programme started. Has the quality of Malaysian-made products and services progressed with the times? Are Malaysian companies now better able to compete in the open market?

The answer lies in the marketplace itself. The consumer is the final arbiter of success and failure. If you can compete, there will be space on the shelves for your product. If you are good enough, people will beat a path to your door to buy your goods. But if you are not, your exit from the scene will not be delayed.

Ladies and gentlemen. Ours is a fairly open market. Barring some exceptions, foreigners have free access to most sectors of our economy. So if you are an entrepreneur and if you can compete successfully against your peers - both local and foreign - then you can say you are doing well.

Our AKI companies are examples of such successes. They have done well in the domestic and international markets. And they have done well because of the exceptional quality of their products and services.

But a word of caution here, ladies and gentlemen. Competitiveness is a relative attribute. And it is constantly changing. You can be competitive one day and be in the dumps the next. Just look at the list of AKI winners from the early years of this programme. How many of these companies are still winners? How many have disappeared from the scene? Look also at the list of ‘excellent' companies celebrated by world-renown management gurus ten or fifteen years ago. How many of these have survived the test of time? How many can still be considered outstanding companies today?

If there is a lesson in all this, ladies and gentlemen, it is that competitiveness is difficult to acquire, and more difficult to maintain. The market place is a brutal one. You have to work hard to be competitive, and harder still to stay competitive. So staying competitive requires continuous effort. Take your foot off the pedal for a second and someone is likely to overtake you.

That is why, ladies and gentlemen, the Government is trying to inculcate a culture of continuous improvement in our business community. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry is at the forefront of this campaign. SMECorp and the Malaysian Productivity Corporation also have year-round programmes to help companies improve the quality of their products, become more efficient, and more competitive.

The Government is also investing billions in education and training programmes to improve the quality of our workforce. Billions more are being spent to improve infrastructure facilities.

I can go on and on, ladies and gentlemen, and tell you more about what we are doing to make our economy competitive. I can tell you about how we have reduced the cost of doing business by simplifying our laws and getting rid of unnecessary rules and regulations. I can tell you about how we have improved the delivery of public services and made government more transparent and accountable.

But all these you already know. Institutions like the World Bank, and research organisations like the World Economic Forum and the Institute of Management Development, too, have recognised our efforts. That is reflected in our steady climb up the ladder of global competitiveness rankings.

Therefore, it was heartening that in a Report released by the World Bank yesterday, Malaysia is recognised as the 12 th most competitive economy in the world for doing business. This ranking placed Malaysia ahead of economies like Sweden (13 th ), Taiwan (16 th ), Germany (20 th ), Japan (24 th ) and Switzerland (28 th ). We will not stop there. We aim to be among the top 10 most competitive economies in the next few years.

The point of all this, ladies and gentlemen, is to impress on you that improving our national competitiveness is a very important objective, and that we all have a responsibility to do this. Individually and collectively. Small companies and big companies. We are a small nation. But if we want to compete, we need to punch above our weight.

Companies like those present here today help us to do this. That is why they are so important to this country. And that is why we want to say thank you to them, and well done.

I like to end, ladies and gentlemen, by congratulating the winners of this year's AKI awards. A special congratulation goes to the winner of the Prime Minister's Award for Industry Excellence. It is recognition of your exceptional performance. Malaysia is proud of you.