The Penang state government regrets the irresponsible attempt of Deputy Finance Minister Datuk Donald Lim at a Penang MCA economic forum to manipulate economic data to benefit BN politically. Donald Lim’s claims that Penang Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth for the first nine months of this year showed a drop to 1.8% is not reflected by business sentiment nor the worker shortage in Penang.
The BN Federal government should not politicise economic data that Penang has recorded negative economic growth when this is not the reality on the ground and even small and medium enterprises (SMEs) complain that their biggest problem is in finding workers. Only on Thursday whilst attending the Small and Medium Enterprises Association(SAMENTA) dinner at E&O Hotel, I was told by its President that business orders were firm and their biggest problem was finding workers.
Also on Thursday, multinational corporations(MNCs) B. Braun had just announced a RM 1.75 billion additional investment over 3 years beginning this year and Agilent Corporation announced a USD 200 million investment next year, both in Penang. Are the announcements of such investments by these 2 foreign MNCs reflected in the BN government’s figures?
The failure by Donald Lim to factor in these two important developments by SMEs and MNCs raises strong suspicions about the credibility of his remarks, bearing in mind BN’s past tendency of manipulating figures and statistics in their favour. For instance BN’s claims of successfully fighting crime shown by declining crime index does not reflect the prevalence of crime continuing throughout Malaysia until former Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan even suggested a review of the crime index due to the disconnect between the figures and the actual situation on the ground.
Donald Lim claimed in the same Penang MCA Economy forum that the poor GDP record this year has put Penang behind the national GDP of 5.3%. This is unusual and goes against the economic trend that Penang, as an industrialised state with 97% of GDP from manufacturing and services sector, will either perform better than the national GDP when GDP is growing or worse than the national GDP when growth is slowing by a factor of at least 10%.
In other words if Malaysia’s GDP is growing 5%, then Penang GDP will be at least 10% higher with a growth rate of at least 5.5%. Likewise if Malaysia suffers a negative growth of -2% then Penang will slow down even more, with a larger negative growth of more than -2.2%. Penang’s reliance on trade results in Penang being directly exposed and affected by the health of the world economy.
With no natural resources, Penang relies on our human resources to generate growth in the manufacturing and services sector, which has resulted in Penang contributing to 25% of Malaysia’s imports and exports, more than 60% of Malaysia’s medical tourism receipts and comprising 28% of Malaysia’s FDI in 2010 and 2011.
Such claims by Donald Lim are so divorced from reality that he should do his homework and check whether sectors such as medical tourism are slowing down with negative growth. Instead almost every private hospital is expanding. The illogical reasoning and self-contradiction of Donald Lim reflects his lack of understanding of how the economy works. This lack of economic knowledge is cruelly exposed when he talks about rising property prices in Penang in a slowing economy.
Property prices are always associated with a booming economy, never with an economy that is slowing down. Penang must be the only place in the world where property prices are going up when the economy is slowing down. I know that Donald Lim has not read economics at university but can Donald Lim do his homework to learn what economics is all about before embarrassing Malaysians with his ignorance and incompetence?
LIM GUAN ENG