At the start of the year, when the cynics of Pakatan Rakyat were deriding the Economic Transformation Programme, an analyst at Jupiter Securities forecast that the ETP would play a crucial role in protecting and boosting the Malaysian economy throughout 2012.
Head of Research Pong Teng Siew said: “Government spending on ETP is so timely which could buffer any external shocks while the feel-good factor in the next general election could provide the much-needed boost to the market.”
How right he was.
Pong was spot on about protecting us from the “the external shocks” and just a little premature about the election, which will indeed be held against the backdrop of a national feel-good factor thanks in no small part to the ETP. Throughout this year the ETP has continued to encourage private sector investment in direct defiance of the global gloom.
Since Pong made that comment others have joined in. The World Bank in April praised the “expected acceleration of private investment in ETP projects” noting that 85 percent of all ETP investment is from the private sector.
This makes a lie out of Pakatan’s central criticism of the ETP: that it is devouring huge amounts of public money and ballooning our debt in the process.
In fact, Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim once predicted that ETP spending will “will send an additional 1.7 million Malaysians into poverty in 2020”. This was and remains scaremongering nonsense. Sometimes it’s hard to know with Anwar whether he is deliberately ignoring the facts so that he can talk down the fortunes of his own country for the sake of scoring points.
The ETP has now well and truly proven its worth. By the end of last year it had created 313,000 jobs via 72 Entry Point Projects valued at RM179 billion. This year, as the Prime Minister noted this week, it is proving essential in helping to shield the nation and the people from the global downturn. This he said has been his government’s greatest success of the year.
And the ETP is set to be just as important next year. Nomura International (Hong Kong) says new and existing investments under the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) will “continue to propel Malaysia’s economic growth next year”.
2013 will see the first instalments RM26.09 billion in new investments pledged for 20 projects under seven National Key Economic Areas (NKEAs) as well as three economic corridors. By the year 2020 when the ETP matures, this will have created an additional 64,282 jobs and will have contributed RM10.08 billion of gross national income.
Nomura’s prediction sits well with what IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said just last month: “The government’s plans to turn Malaysia into a high income, high value-added, innovation-based economy by 2020 are laudable.”
“The Economic Transformation Programme is at the core of these reforms, and it could be a catalyst for the investment take-off that is envisioned.”
This is high praise indeed.
On the eve of the Umno General Assembly the architect of the ETP, Datuk Idris Jala took centre stage at a seminar called “Economic Transformation Programme – Second Year in Action” where he was asked about his role in maintain faith in the ETP in the face of sustained Pakatan attacks.
He said: “It begins with the Number One man, the PM, that’s the key component.”
“At the end of the day, how an economy progresses begins with our Number One leader. If the Number One leader in the country does not wake up and say ‘I want to transform Malaysia’, then susahlah (it’s difficult).”
Astonishingly when the Pakatan friendly media tried to undermine the success of the Umno General Assembly Sunday it attacked the PM for not saying enough about his economic vision for the nation. This proves only that Najib’s critics were selective in their hearing or deliberately deceptive.
As The Choice reported Sunday Najib spoke at length about the next phase of economic reform. He spoke of landmark measures to help the bankrupt get back on their feet, or the doubling of the loans to small businesses from the Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia Fund which will rise from RM50,000 to RM100,000.
Najib’s agenda for Malaysia is and has never been about what will sound good on polling day. It has always been about what will truly make a difference by the end of this decade when we achieve developed nation, high income status.
But in the mid-term, Malaysia has to deal with what will be a tough 2013 and 2014, and the ETP will be crucial in helping to get us through those difficult times.