ACCCIM Comments on New Economic Model for Malaysia
31-3-2010


The Prime Minister’s speech on New Economic Model (NEM) was very comprehensive, firstly identifying the distortions and hindrances in the market place arising from regulatory, bureaucratic and unfair competition especially from GLCs. The emphasis of the NEM on the Government being a facilitator and being market friendly, transparent based on merit, competition augers well for the future prospects for Malaysia. The frank realization of past implementation of well designed policies that did not benefit those who are genuinely in need and creating a culture of rent-seeking and patronage is bold and truthful thus allowing the NEM to address and improve the implementation giving all Malaysian hope for a more open and equitable access to opportunities and good prospects to build a prosperous and inclusive nation.

The NEM has identified all the new sectors for growth and coupled with new market friendly and healthy competitive approaches and practices, the business and investment sectors will be most encouraged to participate and support all these initiatives for wealth creation and business investment and growth. The need for an urgent review of our education system to produce knowledge talents to support the thrust towards high-income economy need to be conducted objectively and not be clouded and hampered by too much nationalistic concerns.

The over-riding focus on eradicating poverty is rightful altruism but the wider focus on the bottom 40 percent may be better served by creating an environment for equal opportunity and access to develop their inherent entrepreneurial capabilities in the same philosophy of teaching someone to fish rather than providing him with the fish.

The divestments of non-core assets by GLCs and Government Agencies should be widen to remove special privileges, licenses and monopolistic conditions enjoyed unfairly by such bodies thereby shielding them from inefficiencies and competition.

The outline of the NEM is most encouraging and a very good foundation to build on the roadmap for implementation to achieve all the goals of inclusive, market friendly, competitive, transparent and merit-based high-income economy.

ACCCIM earnestly hopes that the Government is fully committed with strong political will to formulate effective policy measures to be consistently adhered to by both public and private sectors.

It is also imperative for Government leadership to reexamine prevalent administrative practices in existing civil service and remove all possible impediments that could give rise to discrepancies between policy and implementation, which more often than not happened in the past, resulting in shortfalls and failures of past policies. KPI and transparency should be closely monitored to ensure sound delivery system and consistency of implementation exercises in all key areas of major policy reforms.

ACCCIM is studying the New Economic Model for Malaysia (Part 1) in detail and will submit in-depth feedbacks to the Government in due course.