The Gov’t report card- A sea of red

The failure to reach developmental targets for East Malaysia raise questions about the Federal Government’s ability to execute.

COMMENT

By Joseph Sim

The 10th Malaysia Plan was used as a blueprint for governance by the Federal Government for the period 2011-2015. The plan set many targets/forecasts for Sarawak and Sabah. With the release of the 11th Malaysia Plan in May 2015, we now have statistics from two consecutive plans to evaluate if the targets have been achieved.

Incidence of Poverty

Targets were not reached and situation worsened for Sarawak

The 10th Malaysia plan put the incidence of poverty at 6.4% for Sarawak and 22.8% for Sabah in 2009. A target was set to reduce this to 3.0% and 12.0% respectively by the end of the plan period.

Not only were these targets not achieved, but the situation actually worsened for Sarawak. Figures from the Khazanah Research Institute (Khazanah Institute statistics are used because the incidence of poverty are not reported in the 11th Malaysia plan) placed the incidence of poverty at 7.3% in Sarawak and 20.2% in Sabah.

Rural Infrastructure

Although there was some improvement, none of the rural infrastructure targets for Sarawak and Sabah were reached.

Chart 1 (below) which compares the targets set for rural infrastructure in the 10th Malaysia Plan with the actual results achieved (as published in the 11th Malaysia Plan), show that the situation is especially dire for Sarawak.

Chart 1: Targets vs. actual results for rural infrastructure in Sarawak and Sabah

Source: 10th Malaysia Plan; 11th Malaysia Plan

In 2015 about one in five houses in the rural areas of East Malaysia still had no access to water. Additionally only 1320km of the targeted 2819km of rural roads in Sarawak have been built.

The East Malaysian Economy

Sarawak fared better than Sabah in terms of meeting or exceeding annual growth rate forecasts as specified in the 10th Malaysia Plan. However both states were in the bottom 4 of all states in the country.

For Sarawak (Chart 2), the Federal Government met or surpassed their forecasts in three out of five industries, with the construction sector doing particularly well.

The same cannot be said for Sabah. None of the sectors met projected targets.

Chart 2: Average annual growth rates (%) for the Sarawak economy during the 10th Malaysia Plan

Source: 10th Malaysia Plan; 11th Malaysia Plan

Chart 3: Average annual growth rates (%) for the Sabah economy during the 10th Malaysia Plan

Source: 10th Malaysia Plan; 11th Malaysia Plan

The underperformance of both Sabah and Sarawak is also reflected in the GDP. See chart 4.

Despite Sarawak’s strong performance in 2 out of 5 sectors, its’ GDP fell 2.2 per cent short of what was forecast. This was mainly due to underperformance in the manufacturing and services sectors.

Sabah did even worse, failing to even reach half of the Federal Government’s forecast.

Chart 4: GDP growth rates of Sarawak and Sabah during the 10th Malaysia Plan

Source: 10th Malaysia Plan; 11th Malaysia Plan

To put these figures in perspective, Sarawak and Sabah’s performance put them in the bottom four of all states in Malaysia with Sabah (and Perlis) being the lowest performing states on this measure.

The unrealised targets suggest major issues with the Federal Government’s ability to execute what has been proposed. It appears that there has been too much talk on government strategies (strategic thrusts, game changers, big ideas, national key result areas etc.) and too little focus on how to actually achieve the targets and forecasts set forth.

West Malaysians should not dismiss this as an East Malaysian problem. They must hold the Government accountable because problems in East Malaysia are ultimately problems affecting Malaysia as a whole.

After all, we are 1 Malaysia.

*Note: 2015 statistics quoted from the 11th Malaysia Plan are estimates for the year.

Joseph Sim is currently reading economics at the University of Warwick