Among the pressing issues were foreign workers, digitalisation, education, infrastructure, inflation, and the supply chain.

Shankaran Nambiar, a senior research fellow at the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research (MIER), said the catalogue was important because Malaysia was currently facing multiple challenges concurrently.

He cited the Covid-19 health crisis, food security and stagflation, among others, as examples of these challenges.

“If the country has this ecosystem in place, it would be better for the government to deal with the crises and come up with solutions,” he said during the virtual Malaysian Economic Summit 2022 today.

Nambiar pointed out that network connectivity and digitalisation had cushioned the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on the education and manufacturing sectors.

However, he said, there was a need to enhance digitalisation and technology adoption as these sectors were still grappling with the digital gap.