Holy Kerbau? Whenever Tun M says something to point out the true situation ......every Tom, Dick(yeah u dickhead!) and the occasional Harry starts to pull out the RACE card....
Sudah dua minggu lebih gua tunggu someone to do the thankless job to provide some dollars and cents to Tun's argument.........and by that I mean statistical data with some referential integrity....or at least boleh pakai lah sikit
So now lets see what Tun said -
“Fikirkan hanya berkenaan Dasar Ekonomi Baru (DEB). Agihan kekayaan korporat dalam DEB ialah sebanyak 30% bagi bumiputra (walaupun mereka adalah 60% dari penduduk) dan 40% bagi kaum lain serta 30% bagi orang luar. Tetapi setelah diusahakan selama 39 tahun bahagian yang terdapat bagi mereka ialah 20%, sedangkan yang terdapat bagi kaum lain ialah hampir 50%, walaupun mereka hanya 26% dari jumlah penduduk.
Nilai harta milik bumiputra pula berjumlah 15% sedangkan yang baki dimiliki oleh bukan bumiputra disebabkan harta di bandar bernilai lebih tinggi dari di luar bandar.”
So now this Monkey does not think that what Tun said is very far off from the reality…..so off he goes into the cyberspace in search of the elusive ethnic based wealth and income data for Malaysians………cari punya cari….akhirnya ketemulah kat sini
So folks kalu malas nak bace gua extract dua bijik table which I find relevant to Tun’s statement…..
So here it goes-
Any surprise there?....Dont think so right……..
The truth is even without searching for the data, any Malaysian can easily look around and come up with the “observation”…I have written about it here back in November last year…….
So what is the majic answer to the Economic Superiority of One Particular Race in Malaysia?
My quick and dirty answer is the Control Over Distribution Channel
When the distribution channel is controlled by a particular community who acts in the interest of its own community rather than the general interest of the population, naturally they have the ability to make other communities economically uncompetitive vis-à-vis their own community
Currently there is no public data to shed some light on the situation…..perhaps too sensitive kut
Without data I’m left with my own 2 bijik mata observation of the situation….
Remember the days before Carrefour, Giant, Tesco & all the other big hypermarts?
Let me be more specific remember what happened during Chinese New Year up till Chap Goh Mei of every year……..no telur, no sayur, no ikan, no daging…..no gula for two weeks…this was normal…..the basic man of the street economy grinds to a halt…folks would stock up…..
Ask yourself who are the wholesale distributors of these major products? And who are the retailers?
Still not convinced….take a trip down to any pasar borong, or to where the Nelayans come to shore……and see who is the boss
Ok tu benda kecik kecik…..now lets look at construction…..who do you think control the raw materials? From cat, cement, paku, batu dan lain lain lagi……I can go on and on……into other sectors
And you wanna know the best part about this whole eco-system…..collaboration happens, they who are in-control systematically sells at a higher price especially to the Bumiputras to ensure that the other ethnic community is unable to compete from price perspective…….
To me there’s nothing wrong in that cause we live in a market economy……the suckers will always pay more in a lousy deal……..
So now what?
If we were to view the Malaysian economy from an ethnic perspective…I would say that the Chinese Economic Eco-System is much more integrated from an end to end perspective, and this also includes ability to raise the necessary financial resources to support the eco-system……with or without Government/Political Party Support….
So the key question we need to know is did the NEP managed to create a strong Bumiputra Economic Eco-System within the Whole Malaysian Economy and also help the whole economy to grow without retarding the growth of other ethnic eco-system within the Economy?
Did we have the necessary tools to implement NEP? If we did, did we utilise them properly?
In a nutshell NEP goals was to create balance or in economic terms what folks would call inclusive growth ………..hah apekebenda pulak tu……
Inclusive growth may be measured using the idea of a social opportunity function, which is similar to a social welfare function. In theory inclusive growth leads to the maximization of the social opportunity function.
What the fuck is the social opportunity function pulak ni you may ask me……
Social opportunity function can be viewed from two perspectives
(i) average opportunities available to the population,
(ii) how opportunities are shared or distributed among the population.
DinTurle mu jange pening pulok nok baco hok ni!!! Ambo raso hok pasa gulo tu ambo jawak datah tu….indirectly la….
This social opportunity function gives greater weight to the opportunities enjoyed by the poor: the poorer a person is, the greater the weight will be. Such a weighting scheme will ensure that opportunities created for the poor are more important than those created for the nonpoor, i.e., if the opportunity enjoyed by a person is transferred to a poorer person in society, then social opportunity must increase, thus making growth more inclusive.....Logically la…….
So now let me perkenalkan kepada Bapak Ibu sekelian…….a key tool that can give us a Birdseye view of the situation…..
The Social Opportunity Function and the Opportunity Curve
Lets say a value of Yx is the opportunity enjoyed by Encik X who has Income Z.
Opportunity can be defined further in terms of macam macam la, lets say access to health, education, job opportunities etc etc and the average value all the Yx is the average opportunity or the percentage of the population that enjoy a given opportunity……
So now to view it for the whole system lets arrange the all Encik X’s in ascending order based on their income levels……..these values now can be plotted with the Y Axis as the Access to Opportunity and the X Axis as all the Encik X’s in the Population……
Lets call this curve as the opportunity curve: the higher the curve, the greater the social opportunity function.Thus growth will be inclusive if it shifts the opportunity curve upward at all points. If the entire opportunity curve shifts upward, this implies that everyone in society—including the poor—is enjoying an increase in opportunities, and hence we may call such a growth process as inclusive.
The degree of inclusiveness, however, will depend on
- how much the curve is shifting upward and
- in which part of the income distribution the shift is taking place.
If the opportunity curve is sloping downward, then we can say that opportunities available to the poor are more than those available to the nonpoor (i.e., the opportunities are distributed equitably). Similarly, if the curve is sloping upward, opportunities are distributed inequitably (antipoor).
Lets look at how it would look like in action……
The NEP to me was aimed at creating a downward sloping opportunity curve and at the same time pushing the curve upwards to achieve a more equitable and inclusive growth for the whole economy…….that was the goals and spirit of the NEP…..of how it was implemented, enforced and monitored I have to reserve my observation at this stage….the chart below can give you an overview of the potential effects of NEP
and of course the approach requires some form of transfer from the Haves to the Have Nots….this can be viewed from the chart below…..
As an individual who benefited from the said policy, I have to say a BIG THANK YOU for providing me the educational opportunity that I don’t think my single mum could have afforded if there was no NEP in place……I believe there are many more like me in Malaysia……….
So now lets go back to Tuns final point..
“Saya berpendapat jika negara ini hendak aman dan maju, agihan kekayaan dan kualiti hidup semua kaum hendaklah adil (fair) walaupun tidak sama (unequal). Janganlah hendaknya mana-mana pihak atau kaum tanggung beban kemiskinan yang keterlaluan, sementara kaum lain hidup mewah. Mengumpan sokongan dengan mengambil hak satu kaum untuk diberi kepada kaum lain bukanlah caranya - lebih-lebih lagi mengambil dari yang kurang berada untuk diberi kepada yang sudah lebih berada.”
Synthesized to its finest he points out that reversing the said policy is akin to changing the slope of the Opportunity Curve, when what the Government should be doing is to push the Curve Upwards by improving the implementation strategy, its delivery mechanism and building the necessary monitoring mechanism to ensure that the Original Goal and Objective is achieved.........
More importantly we must ask ourselves did NEP manage to change the original slope of the Opportunity Curve?
If it did not (this monkey thinks so!) given the fact that there is economic dominance of a particular ethnic segment of the population which could counterbalance the access to opportunities by Government policies....then why is the Prime Minister rushing towards dismantling the NEP?
Jib guano mu ning acu kelih sikit gak keliling mung tu reti ko puok2 technocarp tu?
Folks the goals of this post is not trying to provide any specific answers but more about building the framework on how to ask the right questions........thank you for wasting your valuable time to read this post