KUALA LUMPUR: The National Transformation Programme (NTP) is a reflection of Malaysia’s current firm economic situation, said economists.
They said people had benefited from the many socio-economic initiatives under NTP, nearly eight years after it was launched.
This can be felt particularly from the vast improvement in public transport and efforts to address high living costs.
“Those in urban areas can really feel the effect when the Mass Rapid Transit commenced operations in July last year. The travelling among commuters has improved and perhaps, it may have contributed to slightly less congested roads in the Klang Valley.
“We think that the recent economic performance has been decent with the private sector continuing to be the main driver of growth.
Firms and companies continue to upgrade their production capacity, especially those in the export-oriented industries.
“However, the government needs to be very mindful of their state of finances as this would allow the government to have the financial muscle to prescribe the stabilisation policies in the event of economic adversities such as those in 2009 where the global economy succumbed into recession following the sub prime crisis in 2007 and 2008,” said Bank Islam Malaysia Bhd chief economist Dr Mohd Afzanizam Abdul Rashid.
He said there is a need for the government to maintain good financial discipline as there would be a time that it might enact fiscal pump priming to stabilise the economic growth and ensure investor’s confidence that the country is able to ward off a massive slowdown or recession.
Afzanizam said despite some issues that need to be addressed, the NTP was a good benchmark on the good progress of the country.
“Issues such as income and wealth gap, rising cost of living and unemployment among graduates are still prevalent, so this should be taken due consideration as well although these issues are not unique to Malaysia.
“The government should place greater importance on the role of Waqf as a means to complement the fiscal policy. Persistent reliance on tax revenue may not be sustainable as the country would eventually become an ageing society. So tax collection can be very challenging going forward.
“We believe Waqf could potentially be a policy instrument as it is the most effective means to redistribute wealth as it is purely voluntary and is very inclusive as the beneficiaries could come from any race or religion.
“But there should be proper checks and balances as governance and audits must ensure that Waqf assets or funds are well run and put to good use,” he said.
Meanwhile, MIDF Research chief economist Dr Kamarudin Mohd Nor said the spillover effects of the NTP efforts had a direct impact on targeted groups such as entrepreneurs, investors and the people.
“Generally, we see that NTP 2017’s achievement is very encouraging, showing that the programmes implemented are fruitful and able to produce economic and social benefits to target groups. The country is generally on track to realise the objective moving towards a high-income nation by 2020,” he said yesterday.
Kamarudin said in ensuring the success of NTP 2017, the government’s challenge was to maintain the existing performance in the coming years.
“The government should examine the overwhelming impact on the programmes implemented to ensure that their impact can be enjoyed by different levels of society.
“The initiatives implemented since 2010 through the Economic Transformation Programme has helped to provide businesses and people with the opportunity to tap into the current economic development.