The people have the right to demand for greater transparency in state-owned Petronas, including asking for its account to be opened for inspection, said its adviser Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

"I believe we should be transparent, but it's up to Petronas, the biggest company in Malaysia," he told reporters after speaking at the Corporate Governance Award 2005 organised by weekly magazine Malaysian Business in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

He was asked by malaysiakini to comment on a global survey among 15 major oil companies released in February which found Petronas as the world's least transparent. The survey, 'World's Most Sustainable and Ethical Companies' was conducted by a Spanish-based ethics rating firm.

The ranking had Shell at the top for the third year in running.

Transparency and openness

"I think the public has the right to make demands," he added when further asked whether he will make Petronas answerable to Parliament over its financial account in his capacity as the oil company's adviser.

Mahathir earlier spoke about good corporate governance - in which he listed transparency and openness as criterions among others - in his 25-minute speech at the event, attended by some 200 corporate figures.

Petronas has been criticised by many Malaysians for not opening its account for inspection and for using its money to fund government's mega-projects, as well as bailing out ailing politically-connected companies.

Calls for greater transparency in the state-owned company gathered steam after the government made the unpopular decision to hike fuel prices by about 20 percent in March, prompting the opposition to ask where the RM500 billion profits earned by Petronas has gone.

Earlier in his speech, he also said people should not question him over the losses running into billions by the state-owned steel company, Perwaja Steel Sdn Bhd. According to him, it is "nothing wrong" if a company suffered losses less than 10 percent of its market value amount.

"If you lost RM8 billion on Perwaja, it's small money (compared to the company's market value), people shouldn't question that," he said, adding that he as the prime minister then could not be looking over everyone's shoulder.

'No financial sense'

In his speech, he also took a sarcastic tone on the present government's policy on the promotion of the Islamic dinar and dirham currencies. Mahathir had pushed for the currencies to be used among Islamic countries when he was at the helm but the present administration appeared to be not keen.

"I talked about the gold dinars...people like me with no financial sense, I talked about gold, not figures (bank note)," he told the audience. According to Islamic law, the dinar measures 4.25 grams of gold, while the dirham is 3.0 grams of pure silver.

On Monday, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi had reportedly shot down the idea of the PAS-led Kelantan government's proposal to use the Islamic currencies to pay civil servants as an alternative to the ringgit.

At a press conference later, when asked whether Abdullah's reaction on the Islamic currencies proposal was consistent with what he has been promoting all this while, Mahathir responded, "he (Abdullah) has the right to shoot it down, I have the right to shoot it up."

Also present at the present conference was Malaysian Business's publisher, Berita Publishing Sdn Bhd's editor-in-chief A Kadir Jasin.