COMMENT | Infrastructure-wise, the country has made good progress.
I have always enjoyed visiting Thailand since I was a small boy. Over the past many decades, I have been to so many different towns, cities and also many of their nice rural settings and resorts. Having close relatives and friends in Thailand definitely helps in my understanding of their systems, cultural and social fabrics.
In Malaysia, there are many places where time has stood still for the last 30 years or more. Also, we are still struggling with our waste management. With low foreign direct investments , our current economic driver is limited. Our consumer spending is driven by salaries earned by a few large groups of people - government employees , a group of unhappy local contractors with no new jobs and declining private sector employees whose jobs are now taken over by foreign workers The upside is rather sketchy and the future looks bleak.
The manufacturing sector continues to be dominant and grows, tourist dollars and FDIs kept coming in and new companies also continued to tap new capital from this ever-expanding Thailand stock market. Relatively speaking, this is quite similar to the situation back in Malaysia. One has a limited capacity or political energy to fight the powers-that-be. Upon reflection, the idea that started with themovement which gave birth to PKR is a case in point. For instance, will the ground swell again if the PKR leader doesn't end up becoming the next PM?
In contrast to Thailand's triangular economic pillar, Malaysia requires strong and growing revenue streams as well as political stability in order to also support the high operating expenditure with a limited hope that it will trickle down to the three groups that would lead to consumer spending. This is easier said than done as spending could be done abroad in places like Thailand where goods and services are much cheaper.
The change in government administration has managed to stop the financial bleeding process and so much effort had to be spent in the last one year renegotiating the badly planned mega-projects, unnecessary"government expenditure" and borrowings.
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