"We need a marketing approach", so says Dato' Mohd Salleh Majid, who was responding to a question posed by the audience in a luncheon talk organised by the Inmind (Institut Perkembangan Minda) held at the Holiday Inn Glenmarie's Ballroom this afternoon (April 7th 2010).
Identifying problematic sections within the sectors, then segmentised them so that problems could be tackled more easily by the authorities concerned were some of the suggestions offered by the reknown speaker who is also a consultant for various agencies and organisations. He also stressed on the importance of having a 'clear political perspective' so that people will understand Malaysian economic development better. In essence, Dato' Salleh was focusing on how various unexplored and uncommercialised resources can actually be transformed into economic opportunities simply by acknowledging and recognizing the very basic of economic advantages that we have. Agriculture and services are two of the sectors with potential economic advantages.
Towards the end, the New Economic Model issue seemed to have been covertly addressed by many, including Dato Salleh himself, probably due to insufficient information and data that were yet to be released by the PM. I did ask Dato Salleh whether or not he was willing to state if the NEM could offer more and better compared to the previous models ever since the General Development Plan was introduced back in 1956. There are too many issues that need to be addressed - (i) ideological shift - socialism/dualism - capitalism/globalisation; (ii) approaches - ideal-typical index/dependency theories - KRAs etc; (iii) ethnic-based (before the NEM) vs non-ethnic based (NEM); (iv) the role of GLCs in not too-distant-a-time; (v) the role of private and public sectors etc.
To that, Dato' Salleh summed it all up as "its a very political perspective!"
The session lasted for hours! But it sure was a productive discourse. Thank you Norizan (Nobisha), thank you Inmind!
