Building Malaysia as High Income Nation

Making Malaysians having high income and high basic salary has been the dream of our present Prime Minister and all Malaysian.

Our Prime Minister calls it as economic transformation.

In my opinion Malaysia will be able to achieve high income and high basic salary when all Malaysians become productive.

In order to become productive, Malaysians must have skills, good attitudes towards work and hardworking.

We must be productive and become a country that does business with many countries around the world.

We should not only buy from other countries but also sell our products to other countries.

We can make our products marketable when our products have the quality and price that they want.

When we become trading nations that sell products of high quality at competitive prices to other countries, we will become a rich country.

When we become a rich country, we can afford to pay high salary to all Malaysians and all Malaysians will enjoy high basic salary.

Currently we spend so much money buying goods including foods from foreign countries.

When we buy instead of sell, we will spend money instead of getting money.

When our country spends more instead of having huge earning, our peoples will not be able to have high income and high basic salary.

Our government must produce, manufacture and do business and trading with other countries and earns huge income before the government can pay the workers with high salary.

Malaysian government must own farms, supermarkets, manufacturing industries that produce high quality products at competitive price that are marketable to the world.

What is the action plan of our present Prime Minister to transform our economy to high income economy?

Instead of only talking about the idea of transforming the economy from low to high income, what is the action plan?

What the Prime Minister wants to do is not clear to most of the Malaysians.

Our Prime Minister has assigned Datuk Seri Idris Jala to head the think tank that will design and plan strategic actions to transform the country to become a high income nation.

Besides having many laboratories that costs so much money to think about the strategic actions to transform the economy, we have not heard a concrete plan as yet on how to transform the economy.

As a result of his research on Malaysian economy, he suggested to the Prime Minister to cut subsidies to the Malays and other subsidies to the Malaysians.

He further commented that if subsidies are not abolished, Malaysia will become a bankrupt nation in the near future.

The suggestion has caused uproar to the nation and Malays particularly.

Datuk Seri Idris Jala must have thought; in order to increase the amount of money that the country owns, it has to save money by cutting subsidies.

The government has already hinted that the cutting of subsidies on petrol will be done steadily over the years.

The idea of saving more money by cutting subsidies is not a positive forward action that will transform the economy to high income economy.

If it ever does, it will only occur over a temporary period of times and it is not lasting.

The more positive and forward action is not to cut subsidies but to increase income by increasing the peoples productivity and efficiency.

The question is how to increase the productivity of the peoples?

It is not easy to answer this question as it is related to attitudes and beliefs of the peoples.

In order to make this success, the government must take direct control of the peoples.

Unless the government has direct control on the peoples, the government will not be able to change their attitudes and beliefs and thus the productivity of the peoples will not increase.

Government must make the peoples to be productive by making them to work harder and more efficient.

Malaysia has fertile lands to grow crops and to rear domestic animals.

Malaysia has abundant fishes in her sea and rivers and has abundant natural resources such as oil and gas.

Malaysia must capitalize on her fertile lands to grow crops suitable to each area and also to breed domestic animals suitable to each area of her lands.

Every patches of Malaysian soil must be tilled to become productive and no patches of lands left unproductive.

Although Malaysian soils are fertile but so far no vigorous efforts are done by the government to make all patches of Malaysian soil to be productive.

Currently our government wants the people to be productive but that is not possible without the intervention of the government.

Government must turn and develop the fertile lands of Malaysia to become farms using high technologies that are able to yield high produces.

Government either employs the workers or on a sharing basis with them to turn and develop every patch of Malaysian fertile lands to become farms.

Attitude and beliefs of the peoples that work in the farms can be good by treating them with the self-talk therapy.

With the treatment of self-talk therapy the behaviors of the people that work in the farms can become hardworking, productive and efficient.

The produce from the farms, sea or the rivers are immediately pack and sell in all the government supermarkets.

In this way the government can control the prices of basic necessities and these basic necessities can be sold to the people at affordable prices.

Some of the produce that comes from the farms, sea or the rivers can be sent to factories to be turn into products of higher quality or better forms and sell either in the country or abroad.

In order to sell all the products either locally or abroad, continuous research on every product must be conducted continuously.

Government must set up many research centers in the country to conduct research on every product that the government farms produce.

With research, the quality of every product will continually improve and demand by the consumers.

In order to increase demand and increase the database of the consumers, Malaysia must continuously does marketing of her products within the country and to the world.

In order to achieve this, there should be a special ministry for marketing.

The marketing ministry must be headed by the Prime Minister himself and help by another minister.

The more products Malaysia can sell either locally or abroad, the more income the country will earn and the more able the country can pay her people with high income and high basic salary.

Malaysia will be able to sell her products at competitive price to the world when Malaysia can produce and manufacture quality products.

In order to be a country with high income, Malaysia must become agro industrial and trading nation.

Agro industrial and trading nation is a country that has abundant quality agricultural produce and products.

At the same time the country also manufactures non agricultural quality products including cars, airplanes, ships, weapons and artillery, motorcycles and other products including personal hygiene products, clothing, cosmetic, shoes, spectacles, medical equipments, optometry and dental equipments, industrial and agricultural machinery, science and optical laboratory equipments, research equipments, building and construction machinery and others.

Malaysia must manufacture all these products at the highest quality and sell it to the world at competitive price.

The more quality products Malaysia can manufacture and sell it to the world the higher will be the income of the country and her peoples.

Malaysia with high income will definitely able to set a higher basic salary to her people.

The amount of basic salary should be the amount of salary that enables all Malaysian with two children, one girl and one boy to live comfortably.

With the amount of basic salary that a Malaysian earn he or she is able to rent a comfortable house with three rooms, buying a car, money to save for their children education, money to buy medical insurance, money for paying water and electricity bills, and money for buying foods and drinks for family with two children in a month.

A single bachelor may need to save money for marriage and to help his or her parents.

All foreign workers in Malaysia must also be paid with the same minimum basic salary.

With the current costs of living in the city of Kuala Lumpur, in my opinion a basic salary of RM 2500 is adequate for a family with two children to live comfortably in Malaysia.

With additional children, there will be increase in basic salary. One child there will be an increase of two hundred ringgit.

Prof Dr Nasoha Saabin
March 2012.