Malaysia soon to reveal key areas for new economic reform

Singapore - Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Tuesday said his government would soon reveal details of its new economic reform program to make Malaysia a developed country by 2020.

"In a few months time you will get to know what are the key activities or areas we want to prioritize," Najib told the Singapore Foreign Correspondents Association.

Malaysia needed the New Economic Model "to get to the next stage of growth," said the prime minister, who took office just over a year ago, on April 3, 2009.

Najib said the program's goal to raise the average annual per capita income from currently 7,000 US dollars to 15,000 US dollars in 10 years was "ambitious, but attainable."

The government's plan for annual economic growth of 6.5 per cent over the next decade was not impossible, he said, but "it is going to be a lot of hard work."

Najib's ambitious reform, designed to change a "rent-seeking and patronage system," would revamp an affirmative action program, introduced in 1971, which accords special privileges to the majority ethnic Malay race.

But the program is likely to meet with strong objections from Najib's Malay supporters and fellow party leaders.

"Affirmative action doesn't mean only the Malays, ... it also means the Chinese and the Indians who are poor and vulnerable, they also need help," said the prime minister.

Najib said he had support for his plans and felt more comfortable today as when he started as prime minister a year ago.

"We have laid the foundations, the framework is there, the policies are shaping up," he said.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/317368,malaysia-soon-to-reveal-key-areas-for-new-economic-reform.html.