Tan Sri Mohd Sidek Hassan

Tan Sri Dr. Sulaiman Mahbob“Malaysia has moved from import substitution industrialisation toexport oriented manufacturing. A major criticism for the reliance onexport oriented industries is the perception that we are a low costproducer and we have enough supply of labour”more so to provide high skill jobs and high income to Malaysian workers, many ofwhom have acquired tertiary education.In this regard, the wage level has to rise, consistent with productivity improvementsand high skills that the workers have. Additionally, a parallel action has to beundertaken to significantly reduce the reliance on foreign labour especially inmanufacturing and services sectors.Moving forward we need to engineer immediately a smooth transition towards ahigh income and high technology industrialisation. For this purpose, public policiesand the fiscal incentives have to be reset to orchestrate this transition towardsthe next decade of industrialisation.Bearing in mind the importance of this matter, it may be inexcusable if this concernis not sufficiently deliberated in the policy calculus of the 10th Malaysia Plan.123