Interview with Financial Times

Malaysia's Prime Minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, was interviewed by the Financial Times while he was in England recently where the interview transcript is being published online.

Extracting from the transcript, it did quote the PM saying "But fortunately for us, we are doing a lot of things to make our (Malaysia) government do well. The Muslims are being looked after with all sorts of policies, ensuring their progress, increasing their economic participation, providing education for the children, as we do also for other children. From that point of view, they are satisfied. From another point of view, they are sick."

I wonder who was he referring to as sick.

When asked on the issue of declining FDI in Malaysia, the PM was quoted as saying "Since then, Vietnam is catching up, China catching up and India catching up as low cost producers. Of course, slowly China is becoming high cost, in certain areas. So naturally we cannot any more be a low cost producer. So where are we today? We are moving up the value chain. We have become, although we are a higher cost producer today, we are offering higher skills. We are going for value-added products that are more sophisticated technologically. There is FDI for that. But we have to deliver."

The PM did mention that Malaysia is embarking on the bio-tech industry but only 1 sophisticated technology???? What else? From knowing quite a number of foreign business associates who tried to start their business ventures in Malaysia, they were faced with so many hurdles that made them gave up on it and skipped over to neighbouring countries like Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. So, if we are not cost effective at the bottom of the value chain and neither at the higher value chain due to tons of red tapes and you know what, where are we heading to?

And lastly on the issue of New Economic Policy that was put in place for the ethnic Malay race, the PM stated that "The objectives of the new economic policy introduced in 1971 in terms of providing fair equity participation in the economy have yet to be achieved. We aim for 30 per cent [participation]. In some sectors, yes, we have achieved that goal and we can stop."

We can stop? Which sector? When is the government stopping it? Stop to what extent? Or is it just to please the readers only?
Tags: Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Interview, Prime Minister, Financial Times, Muslims, FDI, New Economic Policy, Malay