Malaysia needs to recognise own shortcomings to escape middle-income trap, says economist

PETALING JAYA: Malaysia needs to recognise its own shortcomings through critical thinking instead of fixating on foreign narratives, says economist Professor Dr Jomo Kwame Sundaram.

The Khazanah Research Institute research adviser said that if Malaysia wishes to get out of the middle-income trap, the country must abandon the colonial model of the past that does not tax the wealthy.

“We import a lot of discourse from Washington (United States) and Davos (Switzerland) since that is the fashionable thing to do, but we need to get away from all that by studying and recognising our own problems and overcoming them,” he said at the launch of a book on Saturday (Jan 6) about Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim titled” “Anwar Ibrahim: Tenacious in Dissent, Hopeful in Power,” authored by Professor Emeritus Khoo Boo Teik of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo, and Research Fellow Emeritus at the Institute of Developing Economies in Chiba, Japan.

Jomo added that Malaya contributed 70% of foreign exchange earnings to the entire British Empire between 1946 and 1951.

“We didn’t get independence earlier like India, Pakistan or Sri Lanka because we were so valuable.

“That old model where you do not tax wealth and income served colonial interests and has not changed until today, which is why our model is regressive,” he said.

“It should be progressive, distributed from rich to poor. Now, there’s hardly any wealth tax left,” he said.

Jomo also said that the country must focus on a few universal policies that will work best for Malaysian society, adding that it is important for the government to recognise the need to take pragmatic policy agenda seriously if Malaysia is to move forward with the rest of the world.

“We need to identify what can be done and we need discussions about policies that successfully relate policy aspiration with policy formulation, and most importantly, policy implementation.

We want the best of everything but that’s not good enough,” he said.

“We need to begin to think about the kinds of policies that will work best in complex situations and we cannot underestimate the complexity of Malaysian society,” added Jomo.

Aside from Jomo, the book launch also featured other guest speakers such as former deputy health minister Dr Lee Boon Chye, Petaling Jaya MP Lee Chean Chung and Abim president Ahmad Fahmi Mohd Samsudin.

On the book, Khoo said that it explores Anwar’s hopes and desire to transform Malaysian society, his roles as a Malay nationalist student, an advocate of Islamic activism, a reformist, and a resilient opposition leader.