Opinion | Muhyiddin’s grand plan for Malaysia’s development lacks clear focus when it comes to Bumiputra

The Shared Prosperity Vision 2030 remains high on placebo promises but short on policy specifics. It is seemingly oblivious to its overlaps, misalignments and incoherence

It fixates on reducing wealth inequality and focuses too narrowly on corruption and leakages as the primary problems with the Bumiputra development agenda

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Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin. Photo: dpa

Published: 10:00am, 7 Oct 2020Updated: 1:49am, 18 Dec 2020

When Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin held a town hall last month to discuss the country’s development plans for the next decade, his key points borrowed heavily from the road map presented by his predecessor Mahathir Mohamad last October.

In isolation, that was not surprising. Muhyiddin was at one point Mahathir’s ally and a member of his cabinet until displacing him via an internal coup in February, upending Malaysian politics in the process. Muhyiddin had been intimately involved in developing the Shared Prosperity Vision 2030 (SPV30), which emphasised the need to create more opportunity for Malays and other indigenous populations, known as the Bumiputra, while promising a “decent living for all”.

The real surprise was that Muhyiddin’s recent discussion reflected none of the introspection that was supposed to have occurred in the preceding 12 months.

The plan presented last year by Mahathir’s Pakatan Harapan coalition was a rough draft, a rushed product. The government nevertheless chose to present it as a work-in-progress to be refined further. Muhyiddin’s speech revealed little progress when it comes to Malaysia’s grand plan for the next decade.

SPV2030 remains high on placebo promises but short on policy specifics. It is seemingly oblivious to its overlaps, misalignments and incoherence. Its new plans are primarily operational: the creation of a Shared Prosperity Action Council (MTKB) chaired by the prime minister and a Shared Prosperity Delivery Unit (Sepadu) to monitor implementation. It is unclear why another government agency is needed, especially when the Economic Planning Unit remains Malaysia’s official guardian of development.

SPV2030 lays out a few main objectives, the first of which is restructuring the economy to be more progressive, knowledge-based and value-added. Broadly speaking, these are necessary continuations of Malaysia’s development trajectory, although the omission of sustainable growth is a concern.

To its credit, the plan addresses the potential downsides of monopoly power and low wage share in national income. But its “progressive” aims are opaque and amorphous, suggesting priority will be given to income inequality between classes and poverty alleviation.

By contrast, SPV2030’s second objective is notably specific. It targets wealth and income inequality based on “income group, ethnicity, region and supply chain” – so that “no one is left behind”. How these objectives are distinct from the first objective’s “progressive” economic restructuring remains obscure.

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