The article ' Regaining the urban Chinese vote ' by Dr Hsu Dar Ren can be seen as a follow-up piece to the ' Dawn Raid ' article published by malaysiakini earlier

This is because the implications arising from views such as 'the economic cake has stopped expanding' and there is the need for 'a faster rate to improve the ease of doing business' clearly suggests, that as in the case of the 'Dawn Raids', the Abdullah Ahmad Badawi government does not have a sense of direction particularly in grassroots economic planning and development.

The fact of the matter is that 90% of all manufacturing is undertaken by Small and Medium Enterprises ( SMEs), 75% of which are either owned or controlled by Chinese. This means that in effect we are talking essentially of Chinese small scale enterprises in the entire manufacturing sector.

But the crucial factor is that only 10% of this contribution goes towards the GDP. What this means is that by making this mimimal impact on the GDP (only 10%) their business activity must necessarily be constrained by the lack of innovation, entrepreneurship, the benefits of the multiplier effect, and indeed raises questions as to the extent to which this sector can afford to be egalitarian in its economic activities towards SMEs of other racial groups for the benefit of manufacturing as a whole.

Government loans

And yet until very recently (when it took the prime minister himself to direct this), Chinese SMEs did not qualify for government loans for their businesses and even today much of their day-to day- business activities are constrained by convoluted bureaucratic policies and practices in which they do not have a say.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the Chinese SMEs perceive themselves as being marginalised politically and economically right down the line.

Therefore thie entire question begs some clear and if one might say so, intelligent thinking.

First and foremost there is the need for a profile of SMEs on a stratified basis of economic activity. We need to know who actually owns and controls these SMEs in terms of what orgnisational "clout" they have to initiate institutional reforms, for instance land reforms.

The government (taking into account the 'race/ethnic' mix) would have to consider innovative ideas towards solution, for instance in kind - long term land leases.

It is unrealistic now to suddenly talk of the availability of loans for which an entire bank has been charged to provide employing dozens of 'senior' Bumi bankers and for the MCA (Donald Lim) to talk of establishing a new set-up to facilitate access to modern technology without knowing what the real problem is.

With the greatest of respect the first question should be why is it that Chinese SMEs contribute only 10% to the GDP and why have they become dependent on multinational corporations and what can be done to rectify the situation immediately.

DR COLLIN ABRAHAM holds a doctorate degree in race relations from Oxford. He was initially a civil servant attached to the Welfare Ministry as well as undertook research projects with the Ministry of Rural Development and Economic Planning Unit. He was subsequently seconded to Universiti Sains Malaysia where he was associate professor in sociology, and more recently visiting fellow. He is currently pro-tem president, Malaysian Association of Social Impact Assessors.