Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak announced on March
19 that most of the objectives of the government’s transformation plans
were achieved.
The PM was quoted by Bernama as saying that these
fulfillments led to an improvement in the people’s living standard, a
strong growth in the economy and the country’s stronger financial
position.
He said the planning and execution of the
Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) and Government Transformation
Programme (GTP) not only proved the determination of the government to
steer the country based on the “1Malaysia, People First, Performance
Now” concept, but were also the boldest experiments ever undertaken by
any government in the world in practising the principles of transparency
and accountability.
In his speech in conjunction with the
launching the National Transformation Programme’s 2012 Annual Report, he
said as a result of thorough and rigorous planning and execution of
effective development policies, Malaysia had been transformed from a
low-income agricultural nation to a modern industrial economy with
moderately high income.
He said three years after the government
started the GTP, seven NKRAs (National Key Economic Areas), among them
the NKRA on Addressing the Rising Cost of Living, had succeeded in
bringing relief to the people in the lower income bracket.
With
the Raising of Living Standards of Low-Income Households NKRA, the
government succeeded in reducing the poverty rate to 1.7 percent and
that efforts to improve the living standard of people in the low income
group would not only be continued, but expanded.
Under NKRA on
Improving Rural Basic Infrastructure, more than 3,300 kilometres of
roads had been built, more than 1.4 million households gained access to
clean water supply while 470,000 households had access to uninterrupted
electricity supply.
Under the Improving Student Outcomes NKRA,
total pre-school enrolment increased to nearly 770,000 last year, or 80
percent of the age cohort compared with 67 percent in 2009.
On
the NKRA Against Corruption, the PM said Malaysia was the only
country that made the fight against corruption a Key Performance
Indicator or country KPI.
“This NKRA demonstrated its
effectiveness when Malaysia ‘s position in the Corruption Perception
Index by Transparency International improved six places to 54th position
in 2012 and was ranked third among ASEAN countries,” he said.
“Achieving
a high-income developed country status is our goal. What is important,
we want to become a high-income developed country in our own mould, in
which the happiness of individuals, families and communities is the
primary basis, not purely economic indices,” the PM said.-VNA