New Economic Model Brings Good News to Malaysians

The Invest Malaysia 2010 Conference Prime Minister-cum-Finance Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced the New Economic Model (NEM) on 30 March to lead Malaysia into an open, free and open economic path. The goal is to enhance national competitiveness and per capital national income. This new NEM is encouraging and exciting for the ultimate goal of the NEM is to improve the national per capita income, regardless of race, in the next 10 years to double from the current $7,000 to $15,000.

In term of Malaysian currency, the current national average annual income of $23,800 ringgit, or $1,983 ringgit per month per citizen, is not very much.

Reducing Reliance on Foreign Workers
We trust the real meaning to improve the national income should be for all Malaysians to upgrade their knowledge, working skills, trade competitiveness and value in the workplace. With the implementation of this NEM, Malaysians and civil workforce can no longer sit around and wait for the government or business to automatically increase the salary. This is not the meaning of NEM. Instead, citizens and workers need to improve productivity in order to achieve the goal to increase revenue. The government can only play the role in the promotion and planning but the ultimate effort to increase income has to come from the citizens.

Once we understand the clear concept of NEM, we hope all citizens can cooperate with the government policy and use own action to demonstrate that all can make efforts to upgrade their knowledge and market value. This is because the NEM will eventually need full cooperation from the people to carry out the implementation.

On policy control, the Government must gradually reduce the reliance on cheap foreign labor, and make effort to bring back the 350,000 Malaysian professionals now working in other countries.

Return of Overseas Malaysian Professionals
Undeniably, brain drain of Malaysian talents to other countries is a serious condition. This is the stumbling block for Malaysia to move toward the high-knowledge-based economy.

Therefore, the government must overcome this problem. The government must create a platform for fair and good employment environment in order to retain Malaysian professionals in Malaysia.

Implementation Process
This NEM is fundamentally a good policy. However, we believe that in order to ensure the smooth implementation of this NEM effectively, the government must remove the obstacles that can pop up during the implementation process.

These include the extremist views recently published in the local media and certain extremist group such as the Malay Right Group PERKASA in making demand for the government to retain all Malay rights. It is only then that the NEM can reach the desired goals.