KECEKAPAN TEKNIK FIRMA USAHAWAN MELAYU DALAM SEKTOR PERKHIDMATAN

Abstract

The emergence of Malay entrepreneurs is in tandem with government policy to create Bumiputera Commerce and Industrial Community (BCIC), which had been emphasized during the New Economic Policy (NEP), 1971–1990. The Malays form major component of Bumiputera entrepreneurs. Despite of many privileges received by the Malay entrepreneurs, especially from the government, they are still less efficient. The Malay entrepreneurs have more frequently encountered problems such as lack of fund, lack of skilled workers, obsolete technology and limited marketing channel. This paper attempts to measure technical efficiency of 294 Malay firms in the services sector surveyed in 2001/2002 in Peninsular Malaysia. They were involved in several types of services industries which can be categorized into four large subsectors. This study adopts Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) in measuring technical efficiency. Further, this paper aims to examine the determinants of efficiency by estimating level of technical efficiency as a function of entrepreneursí education level, level of computer utilization, firm size, percentage of training expenditure and research and development expenditure. The estimation used Tobit Model. The results from this study show that the majority of Malay firms are still less efficient. Further, the result shows that computer usage is an important determinant of level of efficiency for the Malay firms in the services sector.