Yayasan Pelaburan Bumiputra – and its subsidiary investment PNB arm – was established to promote the ownership of share capital by the Bumiputera community in the Malaysian corporate sector in accordance with the New Economic Policy (NEP). This was to be the major thrust in affirmative confirmation under an ethnocratic economic nationalism domain.
The working committee members appointed by the Deputy Prime Minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad on 13th January 1977, were Tan Sri Ismail Mohamed Ali (governor and chairman of Bank Negara), Nasruddin Mohamed (secretary-general of the Ministry of Trade and Industry), Geh Ik Cheong (chairman MIMB), Mohamed Nor Mohamad (managing partner of Hanafiah Raslan and Mohamad), James Puthucheary (Partner at Skrine and Co.), Jaffar Indot (sales director of Shell Malaysia Trading), Othman Ahmad (senior partner of Othman and Ng), and Aziz Taha (deputy governor of the bank and secretary of the working party).
Malaysia’s affirmative action policy differs from other countries in one crucial aspect in that “the politically dominant majority group which introduces preferential policies to raise its economic status as against that of an economically more advanced minorities“.