By JAGDEV SINGH SIDHU
jagdev@thestar.com.my
The Australian
What’s happening with Malaysia? The country has long been viewed in Australia as not only an especially friendly Southeast Asian neighbour — the “recalcitrant” Mahathir Mohammad excepted, though he’s been retired six years — but also a model of middle-class success and tolerance in that region.
Today, however, the country is having a hard time holding things together, in the face of religious and ethnic divides, political battles, and economic challenges.readmoret’s happening with Malaysia?
KUALA LUMPUR: The drop in foreign investments into Malaysia is not as bad as revealed by the Unctad World Investment Report (WIR) 2010 and changes are under way to ensure the country competes to attract high value-added investments.
International Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed said net investments in the first quarter rebounded to US$1.41bil and exceeded that of the whole of last year and he had told the Cabinet that the ministry would be taking proactive measures to encourage more foreign and domestic investment.
The WIR reported foreign direct investments (FDI) for Malaysia in 2009 fell 81% to US$1.4bil from US$7.3bil in 2008.
Mustapa, who briefed reporters yesterday on the decline in investments, said the ministry was not disputing the FDI data reported by Unctad.
“The numbers are important for many people and are correct,” he said, stressing that the net FDI number, however, did not paint the whole picture.
He said that in 2009, Malaysia received US$9.4bil in gross foreign investments but foreign companies sent out US$8bil to their parent companies.
Mustapa explained that since Malaysia no longer gave any incentives for low value-added, labour-intensive investments, those investments were now headed to countries in the region where the labour cost was cheaper.
“If we were to bring those kinds of investments in, we will require more cheap foreign labour. We don’t want that kind of investments any more,’’ he said.
In terms of outflow, Malaysian companies invested US$11.5bil overseas and repatriated US$3.3bil of the profits made abroad back home. Therefore the net FDI outflow from Malaysia was US$8.2bil.
FDI globally fell by 37% last year as investors became more careful in making investment decisions.
In a paper to the Cabinet that was made available to reporters, the International Trade and Industry Ministry (Miti) said FDIs fell in 2009 because foreign companies did not make additional investments, and instead repatriated the profits they made in Malaysia back to their parent companies which were then dealing with a global recession.
It said Malaysia was also focusing on sizable investments that had high impact and high value-added and that the global recession saw companies adopting a wait-and-see attitude before making their investment decisions, especially those that involved a huge outlay of money from their end.
Hindering the inflow of high value-added FDI into Malaysia was the slow growth of technological ability, lack of skilled manpower and the weak usage of research and development produced in labs, the Miti report said.
The Cabinet was told that RM59.9bil worth of projects were approved in 2007, RM62.79bil in 2008 and RM32.64bil last year.
In terms of implementation, RM30.07bil worth of projects got underway in 2007, RM23.75bil in 2008 and RM6.7bil last year.
Projects approved need not necessarily get implemented in the year of approval but once they were started, the effects and benefits were felt in stages in later years, said Miti in the report.
Miti said it would be taking proactive measures to encourage FDIs and domestic investment. Among the initiatives are the introduction of a focused approach to target specific high value-added and high technology sectors.
It would encourage the services sector to be the driver of the economy and a corporatised Malaysian Investment Development Authority (Mida) would be empowered to negotiate directly with targeted investors and react in real-time to investment proposals to draw in fresh investments in the manufacturing and the services sectors.
“It has to be a new Mida. It will focus more on domestic investments, engaging with the local chambers, looking at services,” Mustapa said.
“Mida has to respond quickly, be more aggressive and customise incentives.
“(In) the old days we could sit still and they (foreign investors) would come knocking on our doors. These days, it’s no longer business as usual. There is a greater sense of urgency in the new Mida.
“There have to be radical changes. It has to be more private sector driven. The landscape has changed,” he said.
Mustapa said the target of securing RM115bil worth of investments annually under the 10th Malaysia Plan was achievable.
“When there are more opportunities locally, Malaysians will invest. We have to work harder to create more opportunities in Malaysia,” he said.
Mustapa also said the root causes for the sluggish investments were being addressed by the Government Transformation Programme, the Economic Transformation Programme and the New Economic Model.
we tried to piece together bits of conflicting information about a situation. It wasn’t a murder mystery but still it was important enough for us to want to solve. After we kept hitting a wall, failing miserably in a huff of defeat he said: "Well, it will all come out in the wash." True enough it did! It took a while but the truth was revealed.
Have you noticed that when you try to cover up something it almost never stays covered up? One lie is never enough for a full cover up and then by the time you’ve fibbed a few too many, it’s hard to keep up.
Recently Wikileaks a whistleblower website claimed that there is evidence of war crimes in US military reports of Afghanistan. Pakistan objects to the insinuation that it is playing the double agent between the US and the Taliban, while Afghanistan is shocked by it all, as the rest debunk the accusations as false. Wikileaks, however, claims to have documented evidence. I guess it could go two ways, either it is hushed down like most high-profile cases in Malaysia and the public are given the runaround with no answers or the war crimes tribunal might decide to take these allegations seriously and start charging the guilty as they have done with Pol Pot’s regime.
Just years before, going against the Khmer Rouge would have cost you your life and standing up or talking about the cruelty would have been out of the question. Their leaders were too powerful, untouchable and off limits. But where are they now?
Years later, the truth has caught up with them. If anything history has proven over and again that cover-ups get revealed because too many lies have gone before and it’s pretty hard to keep up with them. One cannot continuously cover up or camouflage the truth because eventually, the truth reveals itself for it is humanly impossible to keep up with even one lie.
Many organisations and governments of the past have been under the assumption that the public need not know about everything because the public get terribly confused with too much information. It’s somewhat like a parent saying, "I’ll tell you when you’re older" and the kid finds out from someone else.
There are many injustices in our very own country that for now we aren’t allowed to speak about, many accusations that are not investigated because it involves those who are too powerful and many conflicting pieces of evidence that make it hard to piece together an accurate conclusion to high-profile cases especially when key witnesses are in far away lands.
However, just like Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, people were probably silenced and not allowed to talk, question or write about things deemed sensitive because it involved the powerful untouchables. Only years later, the very subject is not off limits and neither are the powerful generals of the past.
We live in a time where there is too much dishonesty, silencing and corruption; when standing upright means rebelling. But I still believe that one day it will all come out in the wash.
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