The Education Ministry awards the most contracts through direct negotiations, with the bulk of the deals having gone to two companies, the government's MyProcurement portal reveals.

KRU Academy Sdn Bhd, set up by one-time singers who were teenage heartthrobs, shares the largest slice of the pie with Ranaco Marine Sdn Bhd, which provides marine survey training.

The two companies were awarded RM62 million worth of directly-negotiated contracts - or more than half of the value of all 50 directly-negotiated deals listed on the MyProcurement portal.

The Institute of Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas), which made these claims in a statement, said the total value of negotiated contracts exceeds RM170 million.

Wan Saiful Wan Jan (2) "The list also shows that 32 percent of contracts given were because there was only one supplier of the needed service or item," said chief executive Wan Saiful Wan Jan (left) .

While he lauded the publication of the list as a move toward transparency, Wan Saiful noted that the list is incomplete.

For example, it does not specify when the contracts were issued or if these were all for 2013.

There is also no information on the directly-negotiated contracts of nine other ministries, including the Federal Territories Ministry, Youth and Sports Ministry and Works Ministry.

Also missing is directly-negotiated contracts by the Prime Minister's Department.

" I hope the Prime Minister's Department too can show commitment to transparency by publishing details of directly negotiated contracts awarded by the Public-Private Partnership Unit (Ukas by its Malay acronym), which is run separately from the Treasury's Procurement Division,” said Wan Saiful.

"(Ukas) awards contracts that are much bigger, and the government will be seen as coherent only if Ukas too publishes the same list.”