ABSTRACT
The Malaysian government was among the first in the South to voluntarily climb on the privatization bandwagon, enthusiastically endorsed and promoted by the Bretton Woods institutions, particularly the World Bank. From 1971, the Malay elite-dominated Malaysian government's New Economic Policy was officially committed to reducing poverty and inter-ethnic economic disparity, ostensibly to achieve national unity, understood primarily in terms of reduced inter-ethnic resentment. In Malaysia therefore, the term "privatization" is often understood to include cases where less than half of the assets or shares of public enterprises are sold to private shareholders. In Malaysia, when a public enterprise, legally formed as a government department or statutory authority, is privatized, it necessarily first entails corporatization, or the formation of a limited company incorporated under the Companies Act, 1965. Advocates of privatization in Malaysia also claim that it will reduce the government's financial and administrative burden.
