PETALING JAYA: An economist has urged Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to name a finance minister who can get the economy to work and whose knowledge goes beyond accounting or finance.
Carmelo Ferlito of the Center for Market Education said this was not the case with the two previous finance ministers.
He said hard times were approaching and Malaysia needed “a CEO for the Malaysian economy, with the ministers being his or her managers”.
He said this person must be someone who would acknowledge that the engine for the economy was entrepreneurship rather than populist decisions.
“So this CEO must set up the proper and functional institutional framework that will allow entrepreneurship and competitiveness to thrive,” he told FMT.
Ferlito said the finance minister must be able to grasp the dynamism of the economy and ensure that ministries such as the international trade and industry ministry and the human resources ministry were not obstructive.
“Ministries need to understand how their actions can nurture entrepreneurship instead of suffocating it like what we saw in recent years,” he said.
He said Malaysia’s economy and investment climate had suffered from disjointed policies such as strict labour regulations and price controls.
Another economist, Shankaran Nambiar of the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research, said the next finance minister must understand how policies work and how they affect markets and different sections of the population.
Commenting on speculation that Anwar could take up the finance portfolio, Nambiar said this might not be a good idea.
“For reasons of good governance and also because of the challenges that may arise next year, it may not be appropriate for the prime minister to be finance minister although I don’t doubt Anwar’s competence,” he said.
Anwar, who was the finance minister between 1991 and 1998, is expected to name his Cabinet line-up soon. - FMT
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