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Published: Friday August 28, 2009 MYT 12:00:00 PM
Updated: Friday August 28, 2009 MYT 12:42:53 PM

PM: Annual growth must be adjusted to 8% to achieve Vision 2020

By IZATUN SHARI


KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s annual economic growth target must be adjusted from 7% to 8% to achieve Vision 2020.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said for Malaysia to qualify for the World Bank’s current threshold economy for high-income economies and meet its goals, it must grow at an annual growth rate of 8% over the next 10 years.

“Anything less will delay our goal or attainment of our goal. For example, annual growth of 6% means reaching high-income status would be delayed by 10 years to 2030 rather than 2020,” he said in his keynote address at the opening of the National Economic Advisory Council inaugural meeting here on Friday.

He said a reinstatement of the country’s 2008 achievements in Gross National Income (GNI) terms showed that Malaysia would rank 85th at nearly US$7,000 (RM24,500).

He said the World Bank’s current threshold for high-income economies was nearly US$12,000 and going by the projected growth rate, it would reach over US$17,000 (RM59,500) by 2020.

To better reflect increasingly liberalised world trade, he said the World Bank now used GNI rather than GDP to compare countries for analytical purposes to better reflect increasingly liberalised world trade.

Najib said the advantage of GNI was it reflected the growth of the capital truly owned by Malaysians without the perception bias generated by foreign investments in the country.

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