Malaysia – An engineer’s take on oil subsidies

March 13, 2008

Since oil subsidies have been a staple ingredient in the media, I thought I would list down some items of discussion with respect to either maintaining or dismantling the current subsidy structure:

  • Subsidies stifle efficiency: With low consumer energy prices, industry might not be willing to develop more efficient technologies that increase efficiency, as there is no financial incentive to do so. Examples of such technologies are inverters to smooth out the start-stop power requirement of equipment such as air conditioners, more efficient lighting technology.
  • Subsidies artificially increase commercial efficiency: If the viability of new manufacturing lines or engineering solutions have a energy cost component, then because energy is cheap, the return on investment would be higher than if energy was factored in at global prices.
  • Malaysian pays for neighbours’ gas: ‘Nuff said.

Idea, meet money – Start a local Dragons’ Den?

March 12, 2008

It was brought to my attention yesterday that the BBC has an ongoing reality show called the Dragons’ Den. It’s a series where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to secure investment finance from the Dragons — five elite business experts who are ready to pitch-in with their own money.

How about the Malaysian government, via the Ministry of Entrepreneurial and Cooperative Development (MeCD), start a television program with the same idea? To gather a larger crowd, some of the segments can be recorded in front of a live audience, to build up an initial critical mass of viewers. It’s not the same financial league as other game shows, but I would suggest that the number of successful ideas turned into SMIs is more important than having a smaller amount of winners with larger investments in each.