Malaysian Govt Needs To Draft New Economic Plan - Economist

BANGI (Selangor, Malaysia), Dec 27 (Bernama) -- The Malaysian government needs to come up with a draft or a new economic plan to determine the direction of the nation’s development, said University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Noor Azlan Ghazali. The economist said Malaysia needs a comprehensive development plan in the face of the global economy which is currently volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. He said the last time the government had introduced a policy to drive the country’s economy was in 2010 which was the New Economic Model. “We need a new plan because right now we do not know which blueprint is being referred to. With a new plan, it will be easier for industries to focus on whichever sectors and for universities to come out with new programmes relevant to the focus sectors, for example,” said Noor Azlan. He said this to reporters at his last press conference as UKM’s Vice-Chancellor, as his tenure is due to end on Dec 31 after serving since January 2014. He will be replaced by University Malaya’s former Vice-Chancellor (Academic and International Affairs), Prof Dr Mohd Hamdi Abd Shukor. Meanwhile, Noor Azlan said the government also needs to address the imbalance in economic growth among the states, as the average household income in nine, namely Kedah, Kelantan, Pahang, Perlis, Perak, Negeri Sembilan, Terengganu, Sabah and Sarawak, was lower than the nation’s total average household income. “This means that 54 per cent of Malaysians are under the national average household income level, which is why when we visited some of the states, the people said they have not felt the impact of the nation’s economic growth,” he said. As such, Noor Azlan said that a new plan was necessary to ensure a more comprehensive and balanced economic growth. He said the government should also increase its focus on producing high value products which are more sophisticated and high tech, just like what is being done in South Korea. “Between 1990 and 2010, South Korea had shifted its focus from products such as garments to producing high tech products,” he added. -- BERNAMA