A Stagnant Decade – For how much longer?
Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad, MP for Kuala Selangor
“Malaysia is trapped in a low-value-added, low wage and low productivity structure. While Singapore and Korea’s nominal per capita GDP grew within the last three decades by 9 and 12 times, respectively, ours only by a factor of 4”.
“Our economy has been stagnating in the last decade. We have lost our competitive edge to remain as the leader of the pack in many sectors of the economy. Our private investment has been steadily in decline”.
“Our private investment is now half of what it was since the Asian crisis while both manufacturing and service sectors have become less capital intensive. For the period 2000 to 2007, our investment per value-added in percentage nominal terms in manufacturing dropped from 30.6% to 21.7% while the services sector, the decline is from 26.8% to 22.1%”.
Lest you think that those lines were the usual rhetoric of the Opposition Chief in the Malaysian Parliament or of the seasoned politician of Ipoh Utara or the younger breed of Pakatan MPs like PJ Utara, Machang or Kuala Selangor, may I say that you are wrong this time round. If you quickly change position to think that it was from the remorseful newly minted Finance Minister-cum-PM, you are wrong again.
These were abstracts of what is now dubbed as the “Earth-Shaking” speech of the YB Dato’ Seri Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah, Minister of Finance II Malaysia on the occasion of the “National Economic Outlook Conference 2010-2011” Tuesday, 1 December 2009, organized by the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research (MIER).
