Speech at KeADILan Forum

Dr. Lim Teck Ghee:  Press Release for KEADILAN Forum,
Penang, 25 Nov 2006

 

 

In his talk, Dr. Lim Teck Ghee said that various international and national socio-economic indicators showed that the country’s economic future was getting more difficult and stormy.  These indicators included recent global competitiveness, inward FDI performance, stock market capitalization, government inefficiency, business inefficiency, government intervention in the economy, corruption level, environmental pollution, wages and prices and income inequality.  Other subjective indicators such as the sense of material well-being and security, socio-political stability, civic freedoms, religious tolerance, etc. also revealed a worrying situation.

What was of concern was that the dismal socio-economic outlook was coming at a time when the country should be taking advantage of its diversified economy, surging energy and commodity prices and the booming global economy to make a big leap forward.  Instead, the country appeared to be going backwards.

According to Dr. Lim, what was holding the economy back was the poor quality of leadership, structural inefficiencies, political patronage, wastage and blunting of economic edge arising from economic policies such as the Privatization Program, Industrial Master Plan, the National Automotive Policy, etc. that contained serious design and implementation flaws, as well as the massive costs of bailouts which are still continuing.  At the same time, the failure to reform state owned companies and proposed new restrictions and controls in vital sectors such as the distributive and other trades and service sectors that were formulated on the basis of narrow racially based objectives threaten to become major constraints to growth and competitiveness. The 9th Malaysia Plan with its emphasis on infrastructural development was focusing on an outmoded and flawed model of development for the country and was likely to result in even more serious income inequality than was presently the case.

Dr Lim said that the country could have a brighter future if the leadership could rise above narrow parochial interests and jettison past policies that had only enriched vested interest groups.  He noted that little time was available to correct the economic problems in the country.  Without swift out-of-the box and bold reform of major economic policies, and the support and active participation of all the communities in building a competitive economy, the economic future of young Malaysians is likely to worsen from its present state.