People's Feedback Vital to Success of Policies

Fortunately, he had another three months and put in the hard work through summer to get his scroll. There's nothing like having your back to the wall to regain your focus, he liked to say.

In a sense, Malaysia has its back to the wall. It has set a deadline to become a high-income economy and the clock is ticking to 2020.

But we are rediscovering our focus with the New Economic Model (NEM).

Yesterday, the National Economic Advisory Council (NEAC) released its second report on the NEM. Put simply, the new report contains the prescriptions for Malaysia after having diagnosed the state of the nation in its first report.

The first report outlines eight areas or strategic reform initiatives where we need to focus and the second spells out how to do this in greater detail.

Probably, the most important initiative is how to get the private sector buzzing again after slowing investments for the past 10 years.

The NEAC recommends that the government push ahead with existing corruption initiatives, continue relaxing foreign ownership rules and sell stakes in non-strategic government-linked companies (GLCs), among others.

There is a proposal to have a central monitoring body for some 445 GLCs in Malaysia to check their performance and to hold them accountable.

Another important recommendation is to transform the government into a lean organisation. This is important as the government wants to balance its budget before 2020.

Proposals range from right-sizing the civil service, having more open tenders to putting all petroleum-generated income into a special account that won't be used for current spending.

It is easy to drown in details when the report involves more than 100 pages and sceptics are bound to ask if the government is bold enough to adopt all of the recommendations.

But it was not about how many proposals to adopt, said NEAC chairman Tan Sri Amirsham A. Aziz. It was about achieving the NEM goals of having a much bigger economic pie that could be enjoyed by as many people as possible.

More importantly, what does it all mean? For the private sector, it means they now have a clearer signal of where the economy is headed and what the government plans to do about it. It means companies have no more excuses to delay their investment plans.

Having this national focus also means that Malaysia should not be distracted by the wrong debate, such as the concern that the 30 per cent Bumiputera corporate equity ownership target would be eroded.

The focus of the debate should be on how to create more income, said Datuk David Chua of The Associated Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry Malaysia, not on how the income was distributed.

"The least we get distracted in that kind of debate, the better we can implement," said Amirsham.

For the average Malaysian, it means they should be ready for painful changes like costlier prices as subsidies are cut. We should also change our way of thinking about the value of vocational skills and be more active in giving our feedback to the government.

The current transparent process of engagement ensures that the government will have a clearer idea of what the people want.

And most importantly, it is the execution of the plan that will be keenly watched.

"Two thumbs-up to the policy design package but it is implementation that will be more interesting. The government must have the political will and implementation capacity to do this," said RAM Holdings chief economist Dr Yeah Kim Leng.