By Syed Jaymal Zahiid - Free Malaysia TodayFULL REPORT KUALA LUMPUR: The 10th Malaysia Plan (10MP) will maintain the 30 percent Bumiputera corporate equity target, which is seen as a move to pacify Malay voters in light of the stiff opposition towards Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak's New Economic Model.
Slapped with the highest budget deficit in decades, at 7% of the GDP, the country's sixth premier was forced to bow to market demands and run the risk of alienating Malay voters, the country's majority race.
His attempts to convince the Malays that the time has come for them to learn how to play on a level field had caused alarm and concern among certain quarters.
The prime minister had unveiled his first, and the nation's 10th economic blueprint in Parliament this morning.
On subsidies, he said price controls and subsidies need to be reduced in stages to eliminate market distortions and abuses.
However, he reiterated that any reduction will only be undertaken after taking into consideration the people's feedback.
"I wish to give the assurance that the lower-income group and those who are most vulnerable will continue to be given assistance to mitigate the impact of any subsidy reduction on their cost of living," he added.
Raising the per-capita income
The 10MP will develop a Bumiputera commercial and industrial community and create stronger and more competitive industry champions.
The focus will also be on broadening wealth ownership to ensure sustainability and promoting Bumiputera representation in high-paying jobs through enhanced capability building and demand-side incentives.
The 10MP will also underline Najib's effort to continue his predecessors' endeavours to make Malaysia a developed nation by 2020.
To do this, the son of second premier Abdul Razak, aims to cut fiscal deficit to 2.8% of the GDP by 2015 through the unpopular subsidy removals.
An innovative and productivity-oriented economy, through augmented human capital development, will be one of the main thrusts of the new framework.
It also plans to tackle the country's worsening brain drain crisis by beefing up efforts to retain local talents through high-wage appeal while simplifying hiring methods to attract foreign talents.
As such, the plan will try and raise the nation's per capita income to RM38,845 (US$12,139) by 2015 through an annual 6 percent growth.
These objectives have been listed under the 10MP's 10-point strategy, which has recognised 12 key economic areas to achieve its targets.
High-income economy
The 10MP also revealed measures to transform the nation into a high-income economy through a development expenditure allocation of RM230 billion for the next five years.
From the total, 55 percent was allocated for the economic sector, 30 percent for the social sector, 10 percent for security and 5 per cent for administration.
Najib said the 10MP plan was vital to continue the vision and objective of the nation and if vigorously and consistently implemented, would see Malaysia through the challenging times and enable the nation to be a high-income and developed nation by 2020.
Three more pillars have been erected to drive the plan through, namely with the introduction of the 1Malaysia concept of "People First, Performance Now"; Government Transformation Plan (GTP) and New Economic Model (NEM), he said.
Soccer analogy
Najib, who appears to be bitten by the World Cup bug as well, stressed on the importance of collective effort, likening it to a soccer team.
"For a football team to succeed, all players in the team, irrespective of their position, need to work together and play as a team. If they don't, they are unlikely to win, worse, they may lose badly.
"Each player, whether it is the goalkeeper, defender, midfielder or striker, is equally important. However great the footballers are as individual players, victory can only be achieved as a team. Each individual team member is a valuable asset and everyone's potential must be optimised to achieve success," he said.
"Even if the team has the best strikers in the world, such as Rooney, Messi or Ronaldo, the team would still lose if it had weak defenders or goalkeeper, as the number of goals scored would be
more than offset by the number of goals conceded.
"Therefore, to succeed, we must form a 1Malaysia team, that is united and aligned in purpose and vision, to achieve the best for Malaysia, through our collective best efforts," he added.
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