Malaysia Economy In The Global Environment - An economic landscape

By Tan Thai Soon

The intention of this site is to provides some insights and the contrasting views on the economic policies and measures, and to highlight issues that would affect local and foreign investors in Malaysia. The following are some interesting topics and challenging issues that related to Malaysia economy:

• The rise and fall of the Keynesian fiscal policy and the Friedman monetary policy;
• The see-saw views of nationalization and privatization;
• The understanding of deflation and inflation;
• The equation of rate of interest, saving and reinvestment.
  
• The issues of capital control, free flotation or currency manipulation;
• The short term financial assistance and long term wealth creation and preservation;
• The issues on global competition and international co-operation through joint-venture and strategic alliances;
• The post independent New Economic Policy and Strategic Proactive Economic Policy in the global environment;
• The development of traditional argro-industry and new bio technology;
• The development of industrialize economy and knowledge economy, particularly the creativity and innovation;
• The current rate of unemployment and the long term human capital management, in term of education, training, skill and professional development.

The globalization of the world economy, together with the current world economic crisis, give the policy makers a challenging tasks in this challenging times. There are many issues need to be resolved and discussed, particularly the Malaysia economy landscape need a structural change to ensure economic sustainability. Many leaders know there is a "need to change" to be competitive in the global environment:

• Datuk Seri nazir Razak calls for more strategic proactive response to crisis by "review the New Economic Policy" (New Straits Times, Feb 4, 2009)
• Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin agrees to gradually liberalise policies to "provide new avenues for foreign and local investors" to come and invest in Malaysia, but insisted this would not revamp the mainstay of the NEP (New Straits Times, Feb 11, 2009)
• Steven Wong, the assistant director of ISIS Malaysia argued that "one cannot afford to subscribe to economic policies that merely cater to the moment, we must think about tomorrow" (The Star, Feb 9, 2009)
• I believe the present or future leadership will have the "courage to change" to ensure economic sustainability. The role of the government is to create a "strategic proactive policy". On the other hand, government link companies and non-government link companies should play a more active roles to help the society through corporate social responsibility.
  

As a final notes, the success of any economy will depend on a good economic structure and policy. However, other factors such as social and political factors are equally important.