PUTRAJAYA, May 9 — Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has reiterated Putrajaya’s economic model of “shared prosperity” for the nation, which aims to build Malaysia into a sustainable developing country with equitable growth at all levels by 2030.
He said the economic model will create a sense of harmony and stability for the people in a unified nation that is without prejudice and celebrates the racial and cultural diversity.
This, he said, is in contrast to the economic model in the past decade under the former Barisan Nasional (BN) administration.
He cited several examples of the previous administration’s shortcomings, such as focusing only on increasing the national debt for megaprojects, increasing the number of jobs where 70 per cent were low skilled jobs, and focusing economic growth only in some major cities in the country.
“This becomes severe when the value of integrity drops and bribery increases as many had emulated the country’s past leadership. As a result, the government’s delivery to the people was ineffective and was also insincere due to the rampant leakages and abuse.
“Without shame, the past leadership had often used the ‘Bumiputera’ brand for their personal interests and own luxury,” said Dr Mahathir at an event to mark Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) first anniversary in power at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre (PICC) here today.
Dr Mahathir said the shared prosperity model would raise the nation’s purchasing power and eliminate the income and wealth gap between classes, races, territories as well as the extreme disparity in the supply chain.
The Langkawi MP said efforts to build the country’s prosperity should not be valued only through the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as development and wealth should be distributed fairly among all.
“A decade ago, the country’s economy has changed radically and it has hindered the mission to become a developed country as upheld in Vision 2020, which was not achieved.
“High income does not mean luxury. The reality was that even though the GDP and country’s income value were increasing, the country’s wealth could not be felt by the people due to long-term high income along with high productivity, which caused the cost of goods and services as well as cost of living to increase. With this, the high income did not increase our purchasing power,” he said.
Dr Mahathir said the bad legacy which was inherited by the PH government had made it difficult for the current government to finance the nation and wellbeing of the people.
“Now as the government is making amends, the efforts are starting to bear fruit but one year is not enough to correct them all,” said Dr Mahathir.
