What is meant by the Vision
2020? Ask school-going children to show this in an illustration and you will
see paintings of flying cars and skyscrapers and high-speed trains. Ask Pemandu
(the government agency Performance Management and Delivery Unit) and the
response you will get is per capita income of US$45,000 a year, RM1.5 trillion
in gross national income and a high-income economy. When will Vision 2020 be
achieved? Ask the visionary, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad – there’s a high chance
that Malaysia will not achieve developed nation status by 2020. Ask Pemandu
Minister, Datuk Seri Idris Jala, – Malaysia will become a high income nation as
early as 2018. Why the difference? The answer, firstly, involves science and
technology and, secondly, on high income alone. In simple language, it is a
clash between being a developed country and a high income country.
For starters, the government
is well aware that the economy is trapped in a middle-income economy, or
popularly referred to as the ‘middle income trap’. To overcome this, the
government has spent RM7.2 billion (US$2.2 bil) on consultants. All kinds of
programmes with various acronyms such as ETP, GTP, MKRA, NKRA, NKEA were
created. We are told, since 2009, that the per capita income has increased by
42 per cent. On average, Malaysians have become richer by RM3,000 (US$910) in
four years. A total of 196 projects under NKEA will bring in RM144 billion
(US$43.7 bil) to the country by 2020.
In less than five years, it
will be 2020, the year we should achieve Vision 2020. We can quickly be
rich and achieve a high income. Companies will become richer, the government
will also become rich as a result of higher taxes collected. In another three
years, the country’s per capita income will be RM45,000 per year. But is this
what we envisioned when drawing paintings of Vision 2020 when we were in
school? Without an economy based on high technology and knowledge, we can not
claim that we have developed. The fact is none of the products made in Malaysia
are truly world class.
We have tried and are trying
to with Proton. Unfortunately, many do not see the national car project as an
effort to make Malaysia a developed nation. We do not have a global
company with products that are required by at least one-fifth of the world’s population
like Samsung. We also do not have an IT company with revenue that is 10
times more than the country’s largest company, Petronas. We are still far
from producing a movie like Transformers, watched by 300 million people.
Although we have skilled artisan and are rich in natural resources, we do not
have a furniture company with bases in 43 countries like Ikea.
Malaysia’s journey to
becoming a developed nation is going to go beyond 2020. Malaysia is at a
crossroads. Do we want to become a country that is rich but lacking in
development or a developed country which will take a long and continuous,
painful process?
(MAT RODI, 21 Julai 2014)
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