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- The relaxation of existing limits on lending to the property sector and for the purchase of shares.
- The establishment,at 8 per cent, of a floor target for credit growth during 1998.
- Changes in the classification system, so that the defult period for classifying loans as non-performing was increased from three to six months.
In July 1999, a central-bank decree outlined an even more radcal restructuring plan desingned to increase the size and competitiveness of the financial sector:to cut the number of commercial bank from 21 to 6, finance companies from 25 to 6 and merchant banks from 12 to 6, with each class of institutions built around a small number of ‘anchor’ institutions. The plan sought to identify merger partners by end-September 1999, and offered tax incentives to facilitate the merger process. The plan was highly directive: the bank identified the likely anchor institutions and how they would be built. As many as four of the six new banks would continue to have significant government equity,maintaining the government ‘s presence in the financial sector,and even increasing it in relative terms.
4.1.2 corporate sector restructuring
While the Malasian government did establish institutions for managing bank and corporate restructuring, not all interventions took place through these institutons. In contrast to other countries in the region, a distinguishing feature of the Malaysian response to the crisis has been to extend support directly to number of firms.Not all were straightforward bailouts; some involved indirect forms of support . Some actions could have been predicted by government efforts to use companies to fulfill social and foreign policy objectives. But others appear to stem from political and even family connections to recently privatized companies (Haggard 2000).
A common pattern in these cases has been for the government to initiate project, either directly through state owned enterprises or through policy decisions, and then to privatize those efforts in whole or in part to favoured private partners. Not these partners were selected on the basis of political criteria alone; all had some prior experience in business. But the discretionary and non-transparent means of allocating assets and contracts, as well as the personal connections to government officials, created risks. Because the selected government projects served some broader political and policy purposes – such as diversification of the economy (proton); supplying credit to bumiputera borrowers (Bank Bumiputra); advancing foreign policy goals (Hottick); supplying infrastructure (Renong, Ekran) – the government had strong incentives to intervene to keep the project afloat when they experienced distress. In all cases, the government’s private