PM Najib announced the country is poised to grow by at least six per cent this year fuelled mainly by domestic demand. An immediate reaction from some segments of the public and people on the street is that they do not feel the growth.
The government should not merely focus on growth numbers which can be quite misleading and not reflective of the situation on the street.
There are several economic reform and development issues which have not seen much progress lately:
1) The focus of current political debate on economic policy especially the NEM and NEP has taken a very narrow path of destructive racial rhetoric. The government should not allow such an important discourse to take such a course. The government should find out what is wrong with the NEP. Admittedly, a number of leaders had acknowledged the weaknesses of NEP. In response, the PM even came out with a new policy direction, the NEM. PM Najib should focus on correcting the policy weaknesses and work to enhance public confidence on his NEM which was half announced.
2) It is quite obvious that the local economy has been overly dependent on resource based industries. Apart from the resource based industries e.g. oil & gas, palm oil and rubber, the manufacturing, services and tourism industries are lacklustre. Malaysia's regional economic corridors are not attracting investors. These corridors are just another real estate projects without the support of any economic cluster. This is another reason why the government should not focus merely on growth figures.
3) Apart from a lack of economic success story, local and foreign investors are spooked by the high profile failures of public projects such as the PKFZ, Bakun Dam, Cyberjaya and a host of other projects. The government must not take these failures lightly. Najib administration must address these problems and introduce a comprehensive structure to ensure that public funds are not wasted on useless and wasteful projects. Limited resources should be used to bring vibrancy back to the Malaysian economy.
4) The government is still on its denial mode regarding the quality of local education. Malaysian universities performed very poorly on global education ratings. It is granted that these ratings may not represent the quality of education in the country but they provide a good yard stick to measure the progress of our universities. Without a total review of the eduction system, there is very little sustainable economic reform can be achieved. Malaysia's hope to move up the economic value chain to become a knowledge economy will remain a grand vision or a pipe dream.
5) The government spoke about enhancing income per capita from USD6k to USD15k by 2015. Doubling the per capita income will truly help local industries through enhanced consumption power. This is a bold commitment but we are interested to know how the government is going to achieve this milestone. Without an integrated policy coordination and implementation, it is hard to see how the government can move the economy away from its low cost/ low salary orientation.
It is obvious that the government has taken the wrong priorities. It has wasted too much energy and resources on negative and destructive issues such as the Namewee video, race supremacy, political contestation with Pakatan, religious rows, internet censorship and others.
We need both the PM and the BN government to stay focus on the socio-economic challenges and issues. Words, slogans and more slogans will not get us anywhere.
14 comments:
In the old days 80% of our lawmakers time was spent on name-calling,crafting rhetorics,cracking jokes,being sexists,smoking and tea-breaks in parliment and more jokes....now 80% of their time is spent on arguing racism,economics reforms is hardly a subject of interest to many of them except to you and me and the poorer society who need to work like a dog for 3 plates of mix-rice meal everyday.Those YBs eat at hotels .
Of course, these are facts and only the subversive would say that our growth is going to be less than 6% and the bumi share of the total economy is greater than 18%. These numbers are not a figment of UMNO's imagination, but are divine truth handed down from Allah (which is also copy-righted by Perkasa-UMNO consortium). So trust us these are UMNO approved $emua-nya OK!
The one thing I disagree with is that Cyberjaya is a failure. You just need to drive around it to see the many new building being built, filled with employees. Car parking is a major nightmare in Cyberjaya.
The one thing that we need to do though, is to start shifting away from being a back office center to a development center. That'll improve the margins and reduce our risk with Labour Arbitrage.
This is the only way to win the peoples' support, so thinks the P.M. with make up figures. But this is in the genes of their kind !
Neither fact nor fantasy. Six per cent growth is a joke to the man on the street in KL. He feels 6 per cent plus inflation and zero growth as nothing trickles down to him to help with the higher cost of living.
Talking is cheap and easy mah.All the super super corridors created by Abdullah,so Najib not so interested lah! He will look for something more 'beneficial' for the "cunt-ery".
growth is actually a value that compares with the previous year and previous Quarter.
we had negatives in 2009. So can we compute and compare growth based on 2008 level....2009 was minus so its distorts values....
najib, you will get very low numbers for 2011....
i am not an economist but i do try to think logic. Is my thinking correct, Mr khoo??
Najib is in a dream world. He is dreaming in his sleep. When he wakes up he will realize the NEM is an illusion.
Let him dream on till we vote him and BN out.
Please don't wake him up.
If 6% growth why there are so many people still out-of-work?
Why pensioners have to squat with their children and have practically no income from their life-savings they have in the banks?
So many houses unsold and so many shophouses empty without tenants?
I'm loss!
But, I still see CMs,VIPs speed around in government Mercedes with outriders even more!!!
Who is benefitting from this 6% growth?
Anybody can enlighten me?
All these blunders can be corrected by putting the right man for the right job.
It is more than correct to say that slogans and catchy words won't get us anywhere.
The people concerned must walk the talk or else talk no more
the People want to see how and when you walk the talk
and for whom you walk the talk if ever the people concerned do it.
From my understanding the annual GDP growth rate is the average of GDP growth of 4 quarters of 2010. With the higher growth rate of 10.1% in 1Q and 8.9% in 2Q, 6% annual growth is not that high at all. 2011 growth may not be that high though, as the base of GDP numbers have increased in 2010.
Do you want to know who the murdering lawyers of Datuk Sosilwati + 3 others + 5 more are ?
1. Pathmanabhan a/l Nalliannen
2. Surendren a/l Nalliannen
Check it out at the Bar Council website under Disciplnary Orders for Nov 2009
Justice 4 Victims of the Murdering Lawyers
Nice blog post,,love to read it
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