The share of equity itself had been heatedly disputed not long before when a local think tank calculated the Malay share of equity to stand at 45% in 2006, based on the 1,000 publicly listed companies. This significantly exceeded the government target of 30%, which had been set by the NEP. However, the figures were disputed by the government, which used par value instead of market value to calculate equity, did not consider any portion of government-linked companies to be Malay-owned, and looked at all 600,000 registered companies instead of just the publicly listed ones. Critics argued, however, that the usage of par value was antiquated and did not reflect the true value of the equity owned.