KINIBIZ When Najib Abdul Razak assumed office as prime minister in 2009, a core issue he had to oversee was the repercussions of the 2008 global financial crisis. Malaysia was then spiralling into a deep recession and, by the government’s own admission, the economy was stuck in a high middle income trap.

With foreign investments in decline and in order to generate growth, there was an urgent need to respond to the longstanding problem of the low volume of domestic investments.

Najib’s first response was his Government Transformation Programme (GTP), an astonishingly critical assessment of the problems plaguing Malaysia. The GTP outlined Najib’s ‘National Transformation Plan’, a ten-year socioeconomic reform and development strategy. To attain the GTP’s goals, Najib admitted that Malaysia needed a ‘new model’ of development.

His ideas about his different development strategy were subsequently presented in other major policy documents, including the New Economic Model, Parts I and II and the 10th Malaysia Plan, 2011-2015 (10MP).

When Najib embarked on this mission to create his new model, he was confronted with debates about the efficacy of the policy of affirmative action, first introduced in 1971 as the New Economic Policy (NEP).

For the full story, go to KINIBIZ .

TERENCE GOMEZ is Professor of Political Economy at the Faculty of Economics & Administration, Universiti Malaya.