Malaysia, stop being a science and technology laggard!

 

These days, news that infuriates seems to outnumber news that informs. Don’t even get me started on the genius who lodged a police report against Malaysian rapper/filmmaker Namewee for his new movie Babi, inadvertently giving it fantastic free publicity and, in all likelihood, making the movie more successful than it would have otherwise been.

Amidst the public’s preoccupation with this and Budget 2021’s allocation for JASA (the Special Affairs Department allegedly used as a propaganda arm by Umno previously), Covid-19 relief and a million other things, almost no one seems to have paid attention to something that’s of incredible importance to the progress of our nation – our investment in research and development (R&D).

In Budget 2021, currently being debated in Parliament, the government is allocating RM400 million for R&D involving several ministries and agencies. In addition, Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz said part of a RM1 billion special incentive package for high value-added technology allocation would go towards R&D. He said: “Among others, this fund aims to support R&D investment in aerospace as well as electronic clusters such as in Batu Kawan, Penang and Kulim, Kedah industrial parks.”

But he did not say exactly how much of this RM1 billion would go towards R&D.

And while this might seem like a large amount, keep in mind that the total amount spent on R&D in Malaysia in 2018 was RM15.06 billion (both governmental and corporate), according to the ministry of energy, science and technology.

Still, it’s unclear how much the government is set to spend on R&D cumulatively next year although it does not appear to be much comparatively. In fact, funding for R&D in Malaysia has been falling since 2016.

In 2006, Malaysia spent 0.64% of gross domestic product (GDP) on R&D and it gradually went up to a high of 1.44% of GDP in 2016. But since then, it’s dropped precipitously to 1.04% in 2018.

This is appalling.

Investing in high-value R&D frequently bears a bounty of long-term financial fruits. A study of the 28 nations that comprise the European Union found that every 1% of GDP spent on R&D bumped its nations’ GDP up by an impressive 2.2%.

The amount a country spends on R&D is reflective of how much a country values progress. Israel, the leader in this category, spends an impressive 4.95% of GDP on R&D. It’s little wonder that it has one of the best tech ecosystems in the world and produces some of the world’s best minds.

South Korea – the land of Samsung, Hyundai and the 2015 DARPA robotics challenge-winning Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) – is hot on its heels at 4.81%. This is followed by Switzerland at 3.37%, Sweden at 3.34% and Japan at 3.26% of GDP.

It should come as no surprise that these countries also occupy some of the top spots in the 2019 Global Innovation Index.

It isn’t that Putrajaya is oblivious to the immense value in supercharging our investment in science and technology research, for one of the aims of the 11th Malaysia Plan 2016-2020 is to have R&D be 2% of GDP.

But now at only half of that (1.04%), we haven’t only fallen short of the aim, but have arguably undone the painstaking advances we made in the past decade.

For some background, the two largest funders of R&D are the government and business enterprises. Governments are generally relied on to fund basic research – research that might not have immediate commercial impact but is essential for creating and strengthening the foundations of a fledgling field and providing original scientific insights.

Some high-profile instances of this include funding projects or bodies such as CERN’s Large Hadron Collider and NASA that have greatly advanced our scientific understanding of the world in addition to creating immense economic value through the creation of often unintended by-products.

Some examples of the countless commercial spin-offs of a government-funded body like NASA include the GPS system without which it would be difficult for many of us to navigate the modern world, the CMOS image sensor that’s in our phone camera, the cordless vacuum we use, and the lighter, warmer, aerogel insulation outerwear that we may don when vacationing in Europe.

Business enterprises, however, do less basic research and instead undertake R&D activity that has a high likelihood of bearing commercial fruits. Innovative companies such as Toyota, Samsung, and Amazon have enormous R&D budgets from which they reap immense benefits.

If well-coordinated, this informal partnership between government-funded bodies and business enterprises is a match made in heaven, with both parties occupying an important niche. However, the recent trend is worrying.

On the governmental side, the Academy of Sciences Malaysia (ASM), the highest scientific advisory body of Malaysia, only received RM11.5 million in 2018. I’m not sure how much can be done with such a meagre sum. But on second thought, I’m not sure ASM should be given more money as it seems to be grappling with ineptitude.

According to the Auditor-General’s Report 2018 Series 1, ASM had yet to return unused R&D funds totalling a whopping RM31.66 million to the government. The report stated: “The balance of the unused funds was kept by ASM and was not distributed to other applicants, thus failing to provide benefits for the intended purpose.”

It further added: “There is also a delay in approving applications and signing agreements as well as physical monitoring that is not conducted on a regular basis.” Three projects worth RM2.98 million had failed to accomplish the objectives they had set out to and five projects worth a total of RM1.4 million had been terminated as they failed to submit their Milestone Achievement Report.

Also, as of 2016, higher education institutes only accounted for 34.2% of all R&D expenditure but employed 71.4% of all researchers. This is indicative of dangerous institutional bloat.

On the business side, since the 2008 financial crisis, the amount corporations in Malaysia invested in R&D has been falling dangerously. In 2006, they accounted for a staggering 84.9% of all R&D expenditure. Fast forward to 2018 and they only accounted for around half of that, at 43.9%. Now left injured and bleeding between the crushing jaws of the Covid-19 pandemic, I shudder to think how much lower their R&D expenditure will drop this year.

In light of these worrying developments, instead of short-term, self-serving, political moves like allocating inordinate amounts of money to a governmental propaganda arm in the midst of the biggest public health crisis in the nation’s history, here are some things that most need to be done so Malaysia’s scientific rot can be reversed and its progress unshackled:

1. R&D spending on basic research in higher learning institutes and public research needs to be greatly increased;
2. Applied research conducted by businesses needs to be encouraged by providing them with generous tax breaks and other incentives;
3. Robust partnerships between higher learning institutes and businesses needs to be forged by increasing market demand-driven, industry-backed research projects;
4. The progress and performance of the projects funded needs to be monitored and its key performance indices (KPIs) tracked to ensure there is no misappropriation or misallocation of taxpayer funds. Accountability is the name of the game; and
5. Employee bloat is always a concern in governmental bodies. This needs to be kept in check. In the name of increasing employment, what this practice ends up doing is employing leeches that drain the system of its vitality, adding to the bureaucracy and inertia of the institution.

The government’s incessant spouting about being prepared for IR 4.0 means nothing if its R&D spending isn’t commensurate with its ambitions and highfalutin jargon. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.