In his keynote address at the National Economic and Business Forum, the Pakatan Harapan chairman said although the income level had risen, the purchasing power of Malaysians had dwindled.
“When you talk about high income and minimum wages, it must be in the context of higher productivity. If we double our income, our productivity should also be doubled.”
He said PH planned to improve the management and efficiency of industries to increase productivity.
“By resorting to automation, we can improve productivity with new technology so that production costs go down as income rises.”
Mahathir said while some feared that automation would lead to unemployment, the key to prevent this was to train employees and enhance their skills.
This, he said, would create new jobs where workers could “oversee” the robots which would work round the clock.
“We will use fewer workers, but you won’t lose anything,” he said, adding that those with higher skills would receive better pay.
On increasing wages, Mahathir cautioned that any increase would see a chain reaction where a company would be forced to do the same for the senior workers.
This, he said, would result in higher production cost and would cause the market to shrink.
“If the minimum wage is increased and we are able to increase productivity, then we can sustain the same prices.”
Prime Minister Najib Razak had said in the past that his government aimed to achieve its target of becoming a high-income nation by 2020.