What slows down our nation’s economy? It is everything!
This is natural for people to voice their frustration and anger of not being able to accept the rising cost of living, inflation and job losses at the current government. Many did not know exactly or did not even bother of wanting to know where such hardships were originated from and why did it happened in the first place.
According to economist, Professor Jomo Sundaram, Malaysians should be prepared to brace for tougher times ahead as the economy is beset by mainly the current trade war between the United States and communist China.
Besides those external factors, some are also blaming the current situation on the relentless attacks on the previous BN government by the then PH opposition when the then BN has to stop their planning for our nation’s economic future and spend most of their time defending the attacks from the then opposition force.
Many had forgotten or failed to understand that the current downturn in our nation has its root cause from the previous government as well. Corruption, mismanagement and power abuse within the government which had cost the nation’s coffers billions of Ringgit. Worst of all funds from the 1Malaysian Development Bhd (1MDB) was siphoned off and went straight into the personal account of the then premier Najib Razak. Apart from this, funds from FELDA, FELCRA, Tabung Haji, NFC were also swindled in billions by politicians and appointees of Najib Razak.
Asides, the heavy borrowing from the previous government as well as unfavourable trade deals with China has also caused our nation’s debts to increased tremendously, thus lowered the value of our nation’s currency to that of the worst ever in our nation’s history.
The rise of racial and religious extremism and unnecessary tensions created by Umno and PAS with an intention to provoke hate and suspicion has also caused some instability in our nation.
With all these corruptions, power abuse and other misdeeds being carried out by Umno leaders, coupled with racial and religious tensions created has indeed resulted to investors losing confidence in our nation’s economy.
And now both palm oil and crude oil prices have collapsed, many wondered on why are all these happening to us.
China, India and Europe are among largest importers of palm oil. Any crisis arise like the global economic downturn, trade war, the Europe’s debt crisis and the slowing of food demand from India and China will lead to the decrease demand of palm oil, which will push the price of the crude palm oil down.
Asides, the demand and preference of other vegetable oils such as soybean oil, sunflower oil, rapeseed oil and corn oil had also affected the price of the crude palm oil. In the recent years, western nations had campaign hard to promote the soybean oil as an alternative to the palm oil.
Oil prices also fell, dragged by weaker oil demand outlook and a rise in US crude inventories despite growing expectations of ongoing OPEC-led supply cuts.
The outlook shows that the global economic slowdown and commodities war, coupled with the US-China trade dispute are the major contributing factor to the entire situation. If the global economy were to be good, Malaysia would have recovered even faster today after the new government took helm after 10 May 2018.
We also agreed that the intense politicking and the lack of focus by the new government had also created an unease situation where the rising cost of living, inflation and uncertainties had also frustrated the people who were hoping that things will change when regime change took place last year.
The then very experienced ruling party had left over an almost emptied treasury, while the newly inexperienced ruling party has taken over the administration which was almost bankrupt during that period of transition last year.
Such were unexpected. We have never expected our nation’s coffer to be almost dried. Nobody has also expected that the corruption by the then ruling party were so rampant and Najib was the greatest thief in our nation’s history.
Therefore, the new government and the current ruling party must realise that these is no more space and time to look at race and religion anymore for survival in an increasing competitive world market.
If there are still racial and religious extremists around trying to create havoc in our nation, do not give them anymore space. Get rid of them, get rid of these pests as if you continue to give them room to voice their extremism in public, tensions will continue and when such continue, how are you going to rebuild this nation?
We need meritocracy and inclusiveness to allow full potential of the people to be realised to enable them to contribute to the well-being of our nation.
