There has been many letters and analysts talking about how the present or past government should have or should not run mega-projects. I do not know if these people know for sure what they are talking about. Is there a sure formula when it comes to economic planning? I think not. Most analysts and economists try to come up with guidelines or good practices rather than definitive answers. If they came up with answers, there would not be poor countries in the world.

The way I see it, economic planning for a country is like running a business but on a larger scale. Just like running a business, is it wise to run a business without borrowings? Can you run a business smoothly by restricting your employees from any sort of spending? I think not. Borrowings may be necessary as there is no eternal and unlimited wealth from any single entity or country for that matter. Can we then say that because the entrepreneur borrowed money for business he therefore denied his offspring of future opportunities? I think if we are very clear on what we are spending the money on, we should be alright. It is the management of the business entity that is most important.

I don't think all mega-projects are destined to fail from the day the project was endorsed for execution. It may be the lack of buy-in from the people who are supposed to implement them or it could be that the people who were engaged to carry it out do not have honest intentions. It is not unlike most technology ventures, most of them are very high risk but returns can be quite lucrative. The final test of success is not at the point of planning but the point of implementation. I have seen a lot of mega-projects that were poorly implemented.

Some of us may remember the big hype of e-Village, 'The Happening Place', the 'Hollywood of Malaysia' etc. We had world-class planners drawing up the master plan, but the people who ran it seemed to care more about their position rather than the careful financial planning and business sense. The management then bragged of world-class infrastructure with film makers able to film anywhere in the 'large' studio or surrounding outdoor sets and immediately send the raw digital media back to their own country or the US for editing.

My point is that why focus on sets, studio and infrastructure for data transmission. Why not train our young to be more savvy in digital media production and market our value-added services in the prooduction-cycle? It is not that we do not have experts who are world-class prize winners in animation and production.

I would see that most of these mega-projects failed due to the wrong choice in leaders. You cannot appoint a 'caretaker' to lead business from its inception or you will end up spending all your capital without seeing any returns.

Another lever the government can control is the money creation mechanism. Is it so bad to spend when we can enrich the economy? Or should we increase the savings rate and starve the economy? I do not know if by the time we come out of the recession, whether we still have the same purchasing power we used to have when we saved that money as it would have been eroded by inflation.

Spending is not entirely bad or the US would have been bankrupted many times over. The previous prime minister and his think-tank saw this and introduced all the infrastructure and platform for the 'rakyat' to succeed but sadly, we are still talking about the 'now' and addressing symptoms rather than long term solutions. It is also very sad that we have large pool of unemployable graduates where their productivity goes to waste. If we have enough knowledge workers which contribute high productivity to the development of their organisation and in turn the country, we would surely be able to liven up the economy.

I think we are better off if we talk about productivity at the national level. That is what ailing the country and not mega-projects and the big argument of whether 'to spend or not-to-spend'. These mega-projects merely highlight the symptoms of the ailment and not the root problem itself. We should be looking at what we can control and contribute (own productivity and knowledge) and not what we cannot control (such as rising prices). Governments can come and go but the people stay put. Do we always want to whine about what the government should or should not do?