Sassy MP

As announced earlier, my office organised a public talk on “Knowing the ASEAN Market and Industrial Master Plan 3″ last Wednesday.

The speaker was Ir Rocky Wong from Institute of Engineers Malaysia, who has a longstanding interest in Malaysia’s political economy. He is a strong proponent of  liberalisation because he believes it is an inevitable development that we must embrace.

In his presentation, he argued that:

• Liberalisation of our markets is no longer an option due to ASEAN‘s commitment to establish ASEAN Economic Community by 2015
• Malaysia cannot afford to be stuck in the same business model of low value creation industries driven by efficiency
• Malaysia needs value creation driven industries for new cycle of high value creation jobs ~ high value work carried out by highly skilled professionals such as engineering, technology & innovation (ETI) services providers
• The service sector in Malaysia can only be prime mover of our economy if it becomes internationally competitive; Malaysia cannot afford protectionism
• ASEAN is our 580-million strong domestic market, be a regional and global player, using Malaysia as a base

Rocky Wong in action.

The gentleman on my left, wearing the glasses is Senator S Ramakrishna from DAP who was sworn in that very morning

About 30 people came for this talk which allowed us to have a very cosy and informal environment to discuss the topic. Nevertheless, the Question & Answer session afterwards was very productive and many people took the mic to pose questions and share their views with everyone. Great! I hope to see many more of you and engage with you at future talks on Malaysia’s industry and trade.