KUALA LUMPUR: Parti Pejuang Tanah Air (Pejuang) sees a need for the country to undergo economic restructuring to recover from the current downturn.
The party's economic bureau head Armin Baniaz Pahamin said the country needed a new direction to bring back demand for goods and create more job opportunities.
"The indicators for inflation and poverty also need to be updated because they do not reflect the real situation faced by the people who are struggling in their daily lives," he said in a statement.
Armin said the restructuring needed to take into account several factors including technology, food security, access to quality education, affordable housing for the B40 income group and education restructuring to provide jobs based on demand.
He said to date, 288,000 Malaysians had been declared bankrupt as at February, 50,000 contractors had ceased operations and 1.5 million people were in the B5 category, known as "economically" dead.
The B5 category includes those that do not have income, savings and are not able to support their daily lives.
"The current situation which is unable to prevent the value of the ringgit from depreciating further, rising prices of goods and rumours of further increase in the overnight policy rate will continue to burden the people's wellbeing.
"The poverty and unemployment issues in the country stemmed from the economic structure that is not well driven in terms of its implementation.
"Malaysia has failed to achieve an industrialised nation as targeted in Vision 2020 and with the immature industry, the economic direction has shifted to the services sector," he said.
He added this had led to a wider wage gap for selected sectors such as manufacturing.
This was proven when a lot of professional graduates were not able to receive wages that were equivalent to their academic background, experience and job scope.
"This contributes to the rise in poverty and it can only be solved through economic restructuring," he said.