Mirror mirror on the wall, where will Malaysia be heading to?
By Dr Hsu
2 days ago, I posted the global competitiveness rankings done by World Economic Forum. Malaysia was ranked ‘24′, down from ‘21′ a year ago, and ‘17′ 2 years back.
Today I am going to post the rankings of the ‘Ease of doing busniess’ 2010. This is compiled by World bank yearly to reflect the ease of doing business including starting business in a country. The higher the ranking, the more pro-business is the regulatory process in the country…
You dont have to be economic genius to know that Malaysia’s ranking in this is slipping downwards too. Last year, we were ranked NO 21, and this year 23.
I am posting the top 30 rankings here. For the full list, you can go here and for the comparison between 2009 and 2010, you can view here.
| Economy | Ease of Doing Business Rank | Starting a Business |
| Singapore | 1 | 4 |
| New Zealand | 2 | 1 |
| Hong Kong, China | 3 | 18 |
| United States | 4 | 8 |
| United Kingdom | 5 | 16 |
| Denmark | 6 | 28 |
| Ireland | 7 | 9 |
| Canada | 8 | 2 |
| Australia | 9 | 3 |
| Norway | 10 | 35 |
| Georgia | 11 | 5 |
| Thailand | 12 | 55 |
| Saudi Arabia | 13 | 13 |
| Iceland | 14 | 33 |
| Japan | 15 | 91 |
| Finland | 16 | 30 |
| Mauritius | 17 | 10 |
| Sweden | 18 | 43 |
| Korea, Rep. | 19 | 53 |
| Bahrain | 20 | 63 |
| Switzerland | 21 | 71 |
| Belgium | 22 | 31 |
| Malaysia | 23 | 88 |
| Estonia | 24 | 37 |
| Germany | 25 | 84 |
| Lithuania | 26 | 99 |
| Latvia | 27 | 51 |
| Austria | 28 | 122 |
| Israel | 29 | 34 |
Remember a fewyears ago, I wrote an article will Malaysia be marginalised, in which I quoted the FDI rakings of Malaysia:
(data from UNCTAD)
FDI flow to Malaysia slipped from NO 4 in 1990 to NO 62 in 1995.
Apart from economic rankings, look at football. The FiFa latest rankings (2nd September) showed that Malaysia is now ranked 152…view here. We are in page 4 out of 5 pages of rankings, and very soon, we may be in page 5.
What pathetic performance is that, you may ask… Indeed it is pathetic.. It is almost hopeless..
Our economy was 4 times that of SOuth Korea in the 60s, and was almost on par in the early 80s, but now SOuth Korea’s economy is now 4 times ours.
While MU medical school was considered par with University of Singapore when I was a medical student in the latter in the 70s, MU was no longer listed in the top 100 while University of Singapore (now known as National Unisversity of SIngapore is ranked NO. 30. View here
The trend is clear that in EVERY ASPECT, we are losing our standings, and the decline starts in the eighties, when we started shouting “Malaysia Boleh”.
