In an opening speech at the meeting held in the morning of Nov 9, Najib said:

 

“We aim to be a developed nation by the year 2020 and we are looking to more than double our per capita gross national income from US$7,000 (RM24,500) to at least US$17,000 by then in order to qualify as a high-income nation according to World Bank classifications.

 

“This would also mean that Malaysia has to grow its GDP by over nine 9% annually until the year 2020.??? (Malaysian Insider, Nov 9.)

 

Playing with the totally unrealistic growth figure of nine percent at a time when Malaysia and the world are still going through one of the worst recessions in memory, with no definite light at the end of tunnel yet, did sound surreal indeed. More so when Malaysia’s growth record in recent years have been anything but robust.

Obviously advised by his aides that his gung-ho expectation was way overboard, Najib scrambled to do damage control via a press conference several hours later when he denied having said nine percent. He said: “I did not say nine percent, I said ‘around six per cent’ as nine is not realistic.???

But of course, Najib’s denial came too late, as several news media including Bernama and The Star had already quoted him at nine per cent. Though these media dutifully replaced the figure of nine percent with six percent in their updated versions in the afternoon, some betrayed their clumsy amendment by retaining the incongruous per capita GDP growth from the current US$7,000 to US$17,000 in 2020.

If indeed Najib had quoted six percent, then compounding US$7,000 at the increase of 6 percent per annum can only bring us to US$13,000 by 2020. Only when we compound it by nine percent can we reach the figure of 17,000. Figures tell no lies. It was clearly a deliberate statement, not a typing error or a slip made when reading his speech.

So the big puzzle: How could a finance minister, who is supposed to be the economic czar of a country, make such an unforgivable blunder?

Ignorant leading the ignorant

Granted that a man of Najib’s position is expected to rely on speechwriters to lighten his workload but he should remain the master as policy formulator and decision maker, not a robot reading out speeches he could not fully comprehend.

Chairing such an important meeting which deliberates the agenda of MSC Malaysia, which in Najib’s words, serves as “a foundation to build a world-class technology sector to kick start a vibrant Malaysian ICT industry???, I would expect Najib to be in full possession of a macro view of the nation’s economy, the direction it is going, and the specific role the budding ICT industry is playing in relation thereto.

And central to all these is of course a realistic assessment of current and potential strength of our economy.

As finance minister, Najib is sitting at the apex commanding a vast bureaucracy of economic and financial experts and planners, and he should therefore be the best judge of our economic realities. In fact, he should be the first one to spot any gross irregularity in major economic figures. If he is a competent finance minister, he should be the final arbiter as to what growth figure to adopt for policy-making purpose.

Even allowing the fact that he is new to the job, he should at least be able to discern when a wildly unrealistic target is presented to him. Not to be able to sense that nine percent growth is way out of the realm of the reasonable is a horrible admission of ineptitude.

Under the circumstances, it is not unreasonable to surmise that this could be a case of an economic novice writing a speech which was read out by a boss equally ignorant about finance.

It may not be a far-fetched assumption given that Najib’s premiership so far seems to have been one gigantic public relation exercise. This exercise has been void of substance to create the impression of change when in fact nothing has been changed. Not in our hopelessly decadent institutions, nor in our utter lack of rule of law.