Malaysia remains attractive to FDI: For a start, tackle the issues of institutional inefficiencies and labour skills mismatch.
Publication: MIERScan, 15 January 2007. [Download]
Write comment (0 Comments) To win in the world’s fastest-growing markets, transnational giants have to compete with increasingly sophisticated homegrown champions. It isn’t easy. [Download]
Write comment (0 Comments) Many developing and emerging market economies are preparing, if not implementing, new competition laws or modernizing their existing statutes. UNCTAD and the World Bank estimate that there are now more than 90 countries covering 86 per cent of world trade with some kind of competition or anti-trust statute. This is a quantum leap from less than 40 countries some 15 years ago. There is no competition policy in place in Malaysia, although the introduction of fair trade practices legislation was one of the objectives of the 2001-2005 Eighth Malaysia Plan.
Publication: MIERScan, 6 February 2006. [Download]
Write comment (0 Comments) The size of global Islamic funds has dramatically increased since the incident of September 11. Investments particularly from Islamic institutions and wealthy Muslims have shifted from conventional based funds to Islamic funds. Back in 1999, these funds were estimated at about US$800 million and now up to US$200 billion. It is interesting to know who manages them or where they are now.
Publication: MIERScan, 27 June 2005.
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Write comment (0 Comments) Two Different Policy Responses to the Asian Financial Crisis During the1990s, Asian businesses in developing nations acquired short-term funds in global markets. Much of this dollar denominated debt was unhedged. Over time, the quality of the investments made with these funds deteriorated. For example, short-term borrowing was used to acquire assets with a long-term payoff, thereby creating a mismatch between loan maturities and asset maturities. The lack of adequate financial oversight and objective financial data obscured what was happening. Thailand’s economy was the first to falter. By mid-1997, doubts emerged about the ability of Thai borrowers to repay their loans and lenders started to withdraw capital from the country. With insufficient dollar reserves to defend its currency, the baht, the Thai government cut it loose from the dollar and allowed it to depreciate. In the wake of the Thai currency crisis, the value of the Philippine peso, the Malaysian ringgit, and the Indonesian rupiah also depreciated as those currencies were converted into dollars for safety (Stiglitz, 1998). Greene (2002) notes that capital flight from the region caused developing countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, each of which had experienced real growth exceeding 5 percent annually for much of the 1990s, to experience real declines in GDP during 1998.
By Pearl M. Kamer, the Adelphi University, New York. [Download]
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