PUTRAJAYA: Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has urged everyone to ignore naysayers who only have negative remarks about Malaysia’s economy.
He said such sceptics had their own political agendas, and their views did not gel with the glowing reviews from third parties like the World Bank and PricewaterhouseCooper about the country’s economy.
The latest, Najib said, was the Bloomberg Business report, which highlighted that the Asian Development Bank (ADB) had revised its projection for two countries — namely Malaysia and Hong Kong.
“The report states that Hong Kong and Malaysia are proving to be the biggest growth surprises in Asia, with Hong Kong’s forecast being has been revised from two 2 per cent to 3.6 per cent.
“For Malaysia, it has been revised from 4.7 per cent to 5.4 per cent,” he said at the Malaysia Exposition and Convention Centre (MyExpo) ground-breaking ceremony in Presint 5 here today.
The report noted that Malaysia and Hong Kong received the largest upgrades for this year among major economies in ADB’s latest outlook.
Najib also noted that the World Bank had recently revised upwards its prediction for Malaysia’s growth this year in 2017 – to 4.9 per cent, adding that the a figure which would be the envy of many advanced economies.
“Growth is expected to be even higher next year. So, don’t listen to the naysayers who keep running down their own country for their own political agenda.
“The evidence is clear. We are on the right trajectory, and this is shown by the fact that Malaysia is welcomed as a trading partner around the world... by the United States, America, China, Saudi Arabia, India and many others."
Najib said everybody wanted to do business with Malaysia.
“They want to strengthen friendly, mutually beneficial ties with Malaysia, because they know that the facts support what the World Bank also said about us,” he said before quoting a passage from the report, which stated that the Malaysian economy was progressing from a position of strength.
It was from that position of strength, Najib said, that Malaysia launched the Transformasi National 2050 (TN50) to plan for the future.
“In due course, we will lay out a blueprint for how we can set about making Malaysia one of the top 20 countries in the world in terms of economic development, citizens’ wellbeing and innovation by the middle of this century.
“If that sounds ambitious, well, yes, it is. But I make no apology for that. And it is certainly not unrealistic.”
He said there were some people constantly claimed that Malaysia was in danger of going bankrupt.
“Why, then, is it that PricewaterhouseCooper’s latest report on the World in 2050 predicted predicting that Malaysia’s gross domestic product GDP will be the 24th highest in the world — in terms of purchasing power parity — by the middle of the century?
“That is their prediction, and accounting firms such as PwC tend to be cautious when they look to the future.
“With the efforts of Malaysia’s government and its hardworking people, I am confident we will be able to push our placing even higher.” he said.
The Economic Transformation Programme, Najib said, was formulated to create economic opportunities worth RM1.3 trillion and to lift Malaysia to high income status by 2020, creating 3.3 million additional jobs and attracting US4USD 444 billion worth of investments.
“As it is, we have created 2.26 million new jobs over the last seven years. Gross National Income has increased by nearly 50 per cent.
“We have kept inflation and unemployment low, and maintained healthy growth even at a time of uncertainty for the global economy.”
On MyExpo, Najib said it would become the largest exhibition centre in Malaysia upon its completion in 2020.
“MyExpo, combined with the existing Putrajaya International Convention Centre, or PICC, will then be the largest MICE, or meetings, incentives, conferences, and events, venue in Southeast Asia.”
Embarking on the latest and current technology, and taking into account the concept of green building, MyExpo will feature a massive exhibition space indoors and outdoors on a 13.37ha hectare plot of land.