I refer to your report Racialising research: The Asli report debacle . If we set aside the whole GLC argument, and use market value instead of par value, the figure for the bumiputera's equity share is, in fact, lower than the government's claim of 18.9%. Hence, the issue of the government manipulating the statistics to show a lower bumi equity figure does not hold water.

The question is, why was par value used? If you revisit the context of NEP when it was formulated, you would realise that the main thrust is ownership, not wealth. Therein lies the whole confusion, as public equation of wealth and ownership is the same. It is for this reason the relevance of par value in the computation is consistent. Par value was (and arguably still is) the most tangible reflection of ownership rather than market value.

It's difficult to comprehend this because the most people confuse the meaning of ownership with wealth. I'm not saying that ownership is more, or less, relevant than wealth but here the spirit of consistency applies.

At the point when NEP was conceived, the thrust was clearly ownership, ie, 30% means 30 out of 100 available, regardless of the true value (or market value). Some people will argue otherwise, but I believe government is right in being consistent.

If people have other indicators which they feel is better, that is fine. However, sticking to the methodology in the same spirit and basis of how it was conceived, the sincerity of the Economic Planning Unit and the government is evident.

As per my earlier point, the government/EPU can easily choose to use market value and not par value to show a bleak scenario for the bumiputeras, but chose not to for the sake of consistency.

Arguing on a purely methodology basis, Asli's report can be confusing because you are trying to change the rules of the game after the game has commenced.

On other issues such as wealth distribution, there are some merits to Asli's argument. The intra-race Gini-Coefficient (ie, the barometer of gap between rich and poor) is poorest amongst the Malays and is also widening over time. This is an area of concern for future government policies to address.