Speaking to FMT, Geoffrey Williams of Malaysia University of Science and Technology (MUST) said that they would be out of sync with Malaysia’s existing policies.
He added that a different strategy might be needed to steer the country out of the pandemic.
In its latest flagship report, the World Bank Group said Malaysia was likely to become a high-income nation within the next five years and made recommendations it believes would promote sustainable growth in that span and beyond.
Williams said these ideas did not align with policy positions taken by Malaysia.
Affirmative action policies for Bumiputeras, for example, ran counter to the World Bank’s call for equality, he added.
The report also emphasises the need to “insulate GLC (government-linked companies) corporate structures from political influence”, but Williams said the government seemed to “want to use the GLCs as an arm of its policy thrusts”, as outlined by finance minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz.
“On tax reform, the World Bank’s emphasis is on income taxes whereas the government emphasises GST (goods and services tax) reform,” he said.
“There are many other areas of detailed and material differences in strategic aims.”
He suggested an alternative model such as the social market economy, which encourages business competition as a basis for growth but balances this with strong social protections to spur sustainable growth.
“If new strategies are adopted acknowledging a global structural break due to Covid-19 and mega trends such as the fourth industrial revolution and demographic changes, then growth may not be as modest as some say,” he said.
Barjoyai Bardai of Universiti Tun Abdul Razak said that while Malaysia was just shy of the “high-income” threshold, this might not be a benchmark for Malaysia to rush to if other issues were neglected. He suggested instead an agenda that was more focused on social issues.
“To ramp up development is easy. We promote foreign investment, the use of technology and things like that, but correcting inequities could take three generations.
“It is such a huge problem. We need to not just change the economic structure, but also the social structure,” he said.
“We can’t look at just the World Bank or the Shared Prosperity Vision. There needs to be a mix that prioritises equity distribution over growth.”
He said it might be a blessing that Malaysia had fallen short of the mark because the milestone could distract from issues like poverty and gender inequality, which he regarded as far more pressing.