There is no point protesting against the petrol hike… the fuel subsidy was wrong and should have been gone long ago. It there is anything to complain about… it’s about corruption, poor public transportation and the government failure in improving our living standard for the past decade.

Inflation is something inevitable; what really strike Malaysians these days is the failure to improve our earning-capability since the 1997 economic crisis. With exceptions of a few professions, the salary and income levels of most jobs are not on par with inflation rate for the past decade… some sectors are actually falling behind the pre-1997 era.

Singaporeans are paying a despatch boy RM2500 a month while most fresh graduates won’t be getting that much in Malaysia. Off course there are arguments that the cost of living would be higher in Singapore, but their definite advantage is that their overall standard of living would not be affected as much by global effects because of their higher earning power.

The effect of globalisation has become more apparent these days; inflations and cost of living is not something that we can control alone unless the country is self-sufficient in everything. The logical option to keeping our living sustainable is to increase our production level, and thus the income level of general citizens… and it’s something that the government has to think and work on.

We need to have a plan, a solid idea of what we want our country to be in the next 5, 10 or 20 years. One of the reasons why I am not against removing the petrol subsidy is that the money could be better spent (set aside the corruption issue first) on other development instead of protection policies. It’s better to teach people to fish than to give them fishes.

What the lower income group should fight for are policies that could increase their income level and a fair distribution of wealth. It’s unthinkable that some working classes are earning less than RM500 a month; that’s an exploitation to our labour forces. It’s a fair thing that skillful workers or educated peope should earn more than those who are not… but surely the hardwork itself could be rewarded better.

Malaysia need to rebrand ourselves; we are branded as a cheap and resourceful place for foreign investors in late 80s and the 90s, but with the rising of China, India and Vietnam etc… we are not having the advantage we used to have. Malaysia need to learn to stop relying heavily on FDI and create our own branding… we need to optimise our profit levels and minimise wastage, and the government needs to lead by example and Malaysians should work hard on improving ourselves.

Finally, instead of blaming solely on the government for the hardship these days, some Malaysians need to reflect on ourselves too… some of us have been too complacent with ourselves for the past decade or two; some of us have been taking too many things for granted; some of us have been living inside caves for failing to realise what’s going around; some of us have been mere fools to think that government has to be responsible to spoon feed them forever.

Malaysian press are rather quiet about this.

It would be a good thing for Malaysia if the plan becomes a reality. It will boost our tourism, offers job opportunities and raise our country’s name internationally.

Malaysia should be a good place for Disneyland to startup; we do have the crowd and Malaysians do like theme parks in general.

I am a bit skeptical on building it in Johor though; I am not really sure how Johor is like in recent years. Perhaps it could be a better place than Klang Valley, but I think building it somewhere near Kuala Lumpur is a better option.

Malaysia doesn’t have rich resource of bauxite (raw mineral for aluminium), we don’t have a large market for aluminium, and our labor cost is no longer the cheapest these days… the only reason for Rio Tinto to invest in Sarawak is because of its demand for high power supply, which the controversial Bakun Dam will be able to provide.

This raise my questions… why do we build the Bakun Dam at the first place? Isn’t Bakun built to supply sufficient energy for Malaysia for the next few decades?

It’s reported that about 900MW will be used by the smelter, out of the 2,400MW capacity Bakun is going to produce. So, Malaysia is spending billions of dollars, and bearing environmental damage to build the damn dam that should benefit the citizens for years… but is now mostly going to benefit an Australia company and a local conglomerate instead?

Not forget to mention is that the Chief Minister of Sarawak, Taib Mahmud’s family is a large shareholder in CMS… conflict of interest never applied in Malaysia ain’t so?

Besides, aluminium (and other metals) smelters are known for its hazardous environmental effect. Modern days smelters should be able to minimize the environmental impact; question is if the company is willing to spend loads of money into minimizing the damage.

Even if the company is willing to invest on environmental safety measures, there are still risks involved when handling the toxic waste. The easiest way to dispose the waste is by using landfill; and if any leakage happens during the handling, or after being buried… it could spell environmental disaster.

On the positive note… it is going to create working opportunities, some 4000+ directly or indirectly; and it is going to increase Malaysia’s GDP.

The main question is however… who are the real beneficial of the deal? The largest beneficiaries are probably Rio Tinto, CMS, Muhamad Taib and the company that is going to run Bakun dam.

Besides the 4000+ workers, I don’t see other common citizens benefiting much from it… the only parts we play is the taxpayers’ money that are spent on Bakun, and the environmental risk for Sarawakian.

It is easy to come out with a plan, but lots of questions remain uncertain… is it feasible to work on all those mega projects at the same time? Are Malaysians capable of funding the projects ourselves? How are we going to attract foreign investments? Who are going to benefit from the projects? What will happen to the projects if another economic crisis landed on Malaysia like in 1997?

Do we need these projects?

Perak government has spent millions if not billions to develop various industrial areas; most of those areas are close to being wasteland now. It is easy to draw planning and providing infrastructure, but what happen if we could not attract people to invest at those areas? And do we really need all these development?

As far as I know, MSC is not a huge success yet. There are still lots of empty slots in Cyberjaya and Putrajaya… and from the current rate it seems that their potential will not be fulfilled by 2020. So, what makes the government think that we are able to handle mega projects like IDR and NCER at the same time?

A good example is the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ); introduced in 2004 but is not moving anyway at the moment.

Who is going to benefit from the development?

People from north and south might be happy that they are not marginalized by national development projects, that they are getting some fair juice from the government.

One good thing that I see from NCER is that the agriculture sector is part of the plan. I am not sure if the small plantation owners and the small farmers are going to benefit though… I hope their businesses are not taken away by conglomerates instead.

The 1st group of people that will benefit from the plans are probably the land owners… follow by the foreign labours. The construction work will demand lots of workforce, but I doubt many Malaysians would want to work in the tough environment. Besides, the construction firms would probably hire foreign workers straight away without giving much chances to local labours.

I guess they will be another surge of foreign workers coming in… and it’s always easy to get them in and not easy the other way around; more social problems are coming ahead of it’s not handed properly.

The transparency of the government contracts will be in question again. Is it going to be open tender for government contracts or will it be going directly to the pre-selected companies? Even if there is open tender for the contracts, would it be fair and square?

For common citizens, the IDR and NCER are supposed to create lots of working opportunities, ONLY if it is as successful as planned. We’ll see how it goes.

Private Finance Initiatives (PFI)

Lots of the projects will be funded by Private Finance Initiatives (PFI); two-thirds of the NCER’s RM177 billions investment will be funded by the private sectors, that’s like ~RM109bil alone for NCER.

How many investors in Malaysia are capable to support all those development? In the end it’s very likely that government-linked companies like Petronas, UEM, Khazanah etc. that are going to dump out a large sum of money to fund the projects… should we still call these PFI if it happens?

Again, the Port Klang Free Zone is a good example of the failure for PFI funded projects… and seems like government might be forced to bail out the project, and the issue is turning scandalous.

Foreign Investors

I felt that the projects are losing cutting edge to attract massive foreign investments. Besides, I don’t think that IDR and NCER will attract new group of foreign investors… those investors that want to come to Malaysia will come regardless of the new development; they will find a place that is already developed if they want to.

I think that the introduction of IDR and NCER is pulling opportunities away from other Malaysia region… in fact I think that IDR and NCER might be crashing with each other, and in this case I don’t think competition is good for the nation at all.