When someone puts us down because of our weaknesses, the best way to respond is to prove that we can be just as good, if not better. To do that, however, we must first be prepared to take a hard look at where we have gone wrong. And that is the intention of this week’s article, which, in fact, is a reinforcement of what we have previously published on the state and direction of our economy.
Chart 1 compares Malaysia’s growth in gross national income (GNI) per capita with selected countries in the region over the past 50 years. We have written extensively on why the Malaysian economy and stock market have relatively underperformed, and especially so after the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC). The same is true of the value of the ringgit (see Chart 2).
