Malaysia's PEMANDU comes to CM Naidu's rescue

Having learnt city planning from Singapore and demographic enlightenment from Japan, chief minister Naidu is trying out the Malaysian technique of PEMANDU to improve the quality of governance in his state, which is in the throes of bifurcation.

PEMANDU stands for Performance Management and Delivery Unit. It is an autonomous unit under the Prime Minister’s office of the government of Malaysia. It was formed in 2009 to monitor the Malaysia’s Government Transformation Program (GTP) and Economic Transformation Program (ETP), whose target was to transform the country into a high-income nation by 2020. 

As the ambitious Malaysian target is similar to that of Naidu’s, he chose to adapt the technique with the active cooperation of the PEMANDU of the Prime Minister’s office in Malaysia.

Naidu thinks PEMANDU will be useful in achieving his government's objective of "transforming the state into a happy, inclusive, responsible, globally competitive and innovative driven society through a structural transformation and by sustaining double-digit growth."

According to sources in the government, PEMANDU will pave the path for Andhra Pradesh to become one among the three best states in India by 2022, the best by 2029 and a leading global investment destination by 2050.

On December 15, Andhra Pradesh State Development Planning Society signed an agreement with the Performance Management and Delivery Unit (PEMANDU) under the Malaysian Prime Minister’s Department to co-operate in areas of performance management, project delivery and monitoring related to public programs, education and retail services. The MoU was signed in the presence of chief minister Naidu and Malaysia's PEMANDU CEO Idris Jala.

Under its customised "Big Fast Results" Methodology, Malaysia will provide on-the-job training to the Central Coordinating Team of AP in PEMANDU techniques. The team includes stakeholders, customers and government officials, for which the AP government has already paid ₹4.60 crore as part payment (35%) to Malaysia. 

To analyse the roadblocks in the implementation of the projects, labs are set up, and these labs are answerable to neither officials nor ministers. The project is implemented as per the recommendation of the lab. 

"Every next step in the implementation of the project is modified according to the inputs provided by the labs," said a senior official in the state planning department. 

The training is carried out in three phases, namely pre-lab, lab and post lab. The pre-lab training session was conducted from April 25 to June 10, 2016. The crucial lab session of PEMANDU training has begun on Monday at the Dr MCR HRD Institute in Hyderabad. About 200 officials, stakeholders, representatives from think tanks, civil society organisations and private sector have participated in the training. 

In the lab sessions, which will go on until August 5, application of PEMANDU techniques will be taught in governance areas of revenue collection, procurement and public sector service delivery.


“In the PEMANDU method, the planning and implementation of various government schemes are more dependent on the views of all stakeholders rather than those of a handful of officials at a higher level,” said Anil Chandra Punetha, CCLA and special chief secretary, who is coordinating the program.

“Our aim is to focus on inclusive growth, poverty alleviation and wealth creation. PEMANDU’s partnership with the state government will clear roadblocks and accelerate our state’s growth,” he explained.