Economist Muhammed Abdul Khalid has commended the Pakatan Harapan government’s multi-dimensional method in measuring poverty, but proposed additional tweaks in order to better reflect ground realities.

In particular, he said that the Economic Affairs Ministry (MEA) should review education and health indicators.

“Credit to the MEA, they are trying to use a Multi-dimensional Poverty Index (MPI) ... but they must tweak the MPI,” he said during the discussion of “Strategies to Leave No One Behind” at the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals Summit in Kuala Lumpur today.

The economic adviser to the prime minister suggested that education indicators categorise those with less than 11 years of education as poor, rather than the current measure of six years...