Anwar: Gov't dodging analysis on ETP's flaws

The Najib Abdul Razak administration has yet to respond to estimations that its economic blueprint would cause between 7 to 8.3 million Malaysians to earn less than RM1,500 by 2020 which as a whole will make Malaysia poorer, said PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim.

In a statement today, Anwar said that this is the crux of his Dec 15 speech alleging the government’s Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) would leave more Malaysians being categorised as urban poor compared to now.

“This figure includes 51 percent of the national labour force in 2020, compared to 56 percent for 2009. This figure shows that despite billions of ringgit spent, the improvement is marginal,” said the former finance minister.

He argued that the ETP will not only fail to improve household incomes, but instead cause more poverty because of an unsound economic planning.

Anwar said that his analysis had pointed out that the ETP projects were based on unrealistic assumptions, such as a 3.6 percent annual increase in wages from 2010 to 2020.

He said that between 2000 to 2009, wages had increased by only 2.6 percent and this had been overtaken by inflation figures.

On the ETP’s assumption of 2.8 percent inflation used to deduce the programme’s projections, Anwar said this was unrealistic because for the past 12 months, inflation figures had been hovering at the 3 percent mark.

“The goal of achieving gross national income per capita of RM48,000 annually by 2020 is unachievable if inflation is more than 2.8 percent in the coming years.

“If inflation (from now) until 2020 averages at 4 percent, it is estimated that about 7.6 million Malaysians will have an annual income of less than RM1,500 monthly by 2020, up by bone million from 2009,” he said.

Those affected would rise to 8.3 million if the average inflation rate was at 6 percent.

He said that the government has also failed to respond to his analysis that the income disparity would be increasing, and that the income to GDP ratio would decrease from 40 percent in 2009 to 33 percent in 2020.

“This is the main problem in our country, where only a minority - their families and cronies - amass wealth while the majority is burdened by high living costs and stagnating wages,” he said.

Analysts from Pemandu - a government unit which is the chief architect of the ETP - had claimed that Anwar’s figures were misleading and that inflation figures should be excluded from projections, which were based on real growth.