Selling the latest economic programme has been the preoccupation of many in Kuala Lumpur in recent days, as the long awaited Ninth Malaysia Plan (9MP) comes under scrutiny.
Tabled in the parliament back on March 31 by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the master plan for the Malaysian economy up to 2010 aims both at sustaining and boosting the country’s already healthy development, while also focusing more on those who have been left on the fringe.
The report outlining the 9MP sets out a wide ranging mix of economic incentives, developmental packages and social improvement programmes designed to impact on all sectors of society. It addresses educational and housing needs, provides assistance to those regions that have not benefited as greatly from the expansion of the economy, and aims to improve quality of life across the board.
According to Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, the overall objective of the plan is to ensure that all of society benefits, thus benefiting the whole country.
“It has to be emphasised that the concept of integration among the government leadership, government officers and target groups must be aligned to being about change and achieve the objectives determined under the 9MP and the national mission,” he said on April 15.
Though there has been strong emphasis on the social aspects of the plan, it is through its boosting of the economy that the government hopes to create a flow-on effect for the people of Malaysia.
In particular, the package is seen as being good news for the country’s manufacturing industries, which are to have their own separate but integrated scheme. On April 17, International Trade and Industry Minister Rafidah Aziz announced that the Third Industrial Master Plan (IMP3) would be launched in June, dovetailing into the 9MP.
Under what will be a 15-year rolling plan for the integrated development and services sectors, the minister said that the share of manufactured exports to total gross exports would expand from the 80.5% recorded in 2005 to 83.4% by 2010. The scheme envisioned annual growth in exports of manufactured goods of 9.3%, she said.
The plan foresees annual growth in the manufacturing sector of 6.7%, well above the 4.9% recorded last year.
To achieve this expansion, the government has pinpointed 12 manufacturing sub-sectors for further development and promotion, Aziz said. These include electrical and electronics, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, textiles and apparel, transportation, machinery and equipment, metals, wood-based products, rubber and rubber products, and food processing.
One area that will see high expenditure under the 9MP is in information and communications hardware, another plus for the country’s technology industry. More than half of the RM12.8bn ($3.69bn) allocated for information and communications technology under the plan is to go on equipment to service the state’s need for personal computers, servers and networking equipment, the government multi-purpose card (GMPC) identity and information card, and online government initiatives in Malaysia’s various states.
Both the assistance to higher end manufacturing and technology are in keeping with the government’s objecting of shifting the Malaysian economy to the high end of the international market.
It is an aim that could be met, according to VR Srivatsan, the managing director of Oracle Malaysia, who said that the programme could move the country towards being a service- and knowledge-based economy.
“If properly implemented, the 9MP will put Malaysia into the growth countries list and address key areas of challenges that have been outlined for some time now, particularly in lifelong learning, knowledge management and human capital development,” he said in an interview with the business journal Finance Daily in early April.
In his comments, Srivatsan raised the issues of bureaucratic red tape and inertia, which have been the bane of previous government initiatives.
It is an issue that Prime Minister Badawi sought to address on April 14, during a briefing at the Finance Ministry, a portfolio he also holds.
“There is no need to show how powerful you are by delaying things,” he said. “There are people who held back files, and there are people who held back decisions… We don’t want to have ‘little Napoleons’ in the civil service showing power by delaying things, for example, just to teach that person a lesson.”
Despite some muted criticisms, the 9MP has been well received, being seen as having something for all. The prime minister and members of his cabinet in key portfolios have toured the far-flung regions of the country selling the scheme, and now, with the “little Napoleons” given a vision of their Waterloo, all that remains is to make the 9MP a reality.
