Content area
Full text
The Seventh Malaysia Plan: Productivity for Smtainable Development Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, pp. 259 + XIX (paper); ISBN 983-100-061-7 Soon Lee Ying and Shyamala Nagaraj (eds)
This volume brings together a selection of papers presented at a National Convention on the Seventh Malaysia Plan (7MP) held in August 1997 in Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia is among the few developing countries whose post-independence development strategy has been guided uninterruptedly by national development plans. The Seventh Malaysia Plan (1996-2000) - the ninth in a series of five-year plans - was released at a critical juncture of the nation's history, a year before the onset of the 1997-99 economic crisis which put an end to the longest (nine-year) economic boom in the nation's history. The crisis has dramatically transformed the economic landscape of the country, requiring a complete overhauling of the plan for economy recovery from the deep recession. Despite its tragic fate, a close study of the 7MP is crucial for understanding the critical issues confronted by the economy in the lead-up to the crisis and to inform the current debate on redesigning the post-crisis development strategy. This volume is therefore a timely addition to the literature on economic development in Malaysia.
The volume contains 15 chapters contributed by prominent Malaysia economists, enveloped in a succinct introduction by the editors. The first chapter by Ali Abul Hassan paints a broad-brush picture of the national and international economic context for the plan, followed by a comprehensive survey of it aims, priorities, and strategies. Busy readers who look for a compact yet illuminating overview of the Plan, which spans over thousand printed pages, will welcome the chapter. A widely held view in the recent literature on the East Asian crisis is that policy makers and planners in the crisis-affected countries failed to detect in advance any sign of an on-coming crisis. The insightful discussion on the pre-crisis economy does not corroborate this view. It seems that the Malaysian planners were aware that the engine of remarkable growth over the past decade - export-led industrialisation based on cheap labour - had begun to run out of steam in the face of increasing labour shortages, rising wages, and increasing competition from low cost producers. They...