Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News
Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News |
| Malaysia’s Obstacles in Achieving Vision 2020 Posted: 21 Oct 2013 10:18 AM PDT "Malaysia's obstacles in achieving developed nation status by 2020" may seem like a mundane essay topic for secondary students – a karangan topic done to death. But it is a topic of discussion that has far reaching implications on the country's future and wellbeing – the everyday rakyat's wellbeing. Much has been touted about our nation's economic progress and the aspiration of joining the ranks of high income nation club, but to those uninitiated, to the ordinary rakyat on the street, what indeed are our nation's obstacles in realising the status of a developed nation? I hereby pitch an argument, in reference to our nation's economic progress, focusing less on data and diagrams but more on context. Malaysia's economy has grown leaps and bounds since independence well through the 70s, eradicating hard core poverty, creating a middle income class of abundant economic opportunities. Shifting from the agricultural sector towards resource commodities and manufacturing, our economy basically transformed from exporting rubber and tin to exporting manufactured products and electronics. Back in those days Malaysia, as one of the fastest growing East Asian economies, retched up enviable economic growth that spurred the interests and strategic concern of Western economies then. We were poised to be among the 'Asian Tigers', on par with Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong. We were, but then we weren't. Somewhere along the lines, in the 80s and 90s, Malaysia lost out on the race. While other countries innovated and outleaped us with technological prowess and cutting edge financial sectors, Malaysia relied heavily upon labour input. The source of economic growth can be broken into three components – productivity (akin to technological improvement), labour and capital growth; Malaysia specialised in labour intensive activities. Some argue that this dependence on low wage labour input delayed the process of industrial upgrading. And hence, we have since been caught in this so-called 'middle income trap'. Much of what is written on Malaysia's economic progress touches on the issue of Malaysia's 'middle income trap'. This notion of the middle income bubble is often tossed around without much understanding of its underlying fundamentals. Truth is, this middle income trap is a vague notion even among the ranks of economists. Economists ponder if this middle income trap is just a myth or indeed a genuine trap. One such discussion is outlined here. To make things easy, the way I would see this middle income trap is that our country is currently in a position that is not price competitive enough to match low labour cost countries, nor do we have an edge against the technologically advanced countries. We cannot possibly ascend down, yet we are not climbing up. We are trapped! Read more at: http://www.loyarburok.com/2013/10/21/malaysia%E2%80%99s-obstacles-achieving-vision-2020/ |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 ulasan:
Catat Ulasan