As we all know, PM has introduced 4 strategic thrusts to transform us towards Vision 2020. If you guys are still clueless about the thrusts, let me brief you. The first thrust which had been introduced quite a long time ago was the 1 Malaysia concepts which emphasize on “People First, Performance Now”. This is followed by three other thrust namely the 10^th Malaysia Plan, GTP and ETP.

How many of you actually know about our current economic condition? Is it good? Or bad? The good news is Malaysia is one of only 13 countries in the world to have sustained growth of over 7% for 25 years or more since 1945. But due to the recent global events, eg; global financial crisis, it has affected us. GDP growth now stands around 4-5%.

The future looks gloom. Did you know Malaysia has a rising debt? Our current debt stands at RM 362 billion and a rising deficit. If the government debt continues to rise at the rate of 12% per annum, we could go BANCRUPT in 2019. Surely we do not want end up like Greece whose debt at EUR 300 billion! So in order to save Malaysia, we must reduce our expenditure and increase our GDP.

One of the ways to reduce our expenditure is by reducing the subsidy. Malaysians need to be aware that we are one of the highest subsidized nations, even higher than Indonesia and Philippines. In 2009 alone, RM 74 billion was spent for subsidy purposes. That’s RM 12,900 per household. You should know that the price of our petrol, cooking oil, flour and sugar are among the lowest in the region.

However, when the government wants to increase the price in order to reduce our subsidy expenditures, some ungrateful Malaysian started complaining and saying all sorts of criticism towards them, particularly the opposing forces.

Well, obviously those people know nothing about our economy. Wake up people. Be real. We must live in the REAL WORLD! You really want to see this country going bankrupt? You want us to end up like Greece? I am a government supporter simply because I can see their sincere efforts towards transforming Malaysia into a better country, thus giving us the citizen a better place to live in. As for the opposing forces, all they are good at is talking bulls***, where is the action? To those who supported them, have you ever ask yourself, what did they do that actually bring benefits to our country. Try making a research and then compare their effort with the government. Open your eye, widen your perspective and know the truth. Don’t just listen and accept everything they told you. *melihat jangan sampai tak nampak*

Back to our discussion, the question on the table now is what we should do in order to realize our ambition to achieve Vision 2020. The simple answer would obviously is to increase our revenue and at the same time to reduce the cost.

FYI, in order to become a high income nation by 2020, our GDP must grow at least 6% per annum (2011-2020). Recently, the government just launched the NEM and one of the components under it is the NKEAs. The main objective of NKEAs is to increase our per capita income from RM 23,770 to RM 48,000.

To helps achieve the NKEAs objective, the government introduced ETP. Though this, 131 EPPs and 60 BO’s had been identified. We are talking about projects worth RM 1.6 trillion here. 92% of the investment will come from the private sector and they will become the new engine of growth for our country. This is in line with the 10^th Malaysia Plan which is private driven. The remaining 8% will come from public funding. Through NKEAs, an additional 3.3 million jobs will be created by year 2020 and this will also shift us towards higher income nation.

Now we are waiting for the government to release the ETP book (26.10.2010) to the public in which they will explain in details on how they are going to carried out the whole programme. One thing for sure, in order to turn this into a reality, all of us must be united irrespective of race, religion and use our diversity as strength to drive the economy.