What's on the NEM?

A supposedly growth plan for the nation that has all the rhetoric but where is the substance?

The 'rent seeking' culture is perhaps too entrenched and within the system and it seems that this has become a 'right' for those who are well connected.

Where to next, Malaysia?

clipped from english.cpiasia.net Where is the NEM in the 10th Plan? The 10th  Malaysia Plan was heavily advertised as the plan that would usher in a new economic era for all Malaysians built on a New Economic Model. The key features of the NEM were: * Merit and excellence criteria for all implementation decisions and processes,     * Transparency, accountability and integrity as part of normal business practice,     * Dismantling of quotas, preferences, APs, closed tenders and other non-competitive processes.   Now that it is out, I search in vain for all these criteria and for signs of the major policy reforms that were supposed to be in the pipeline. Some of the rhetoric remains in the document. There has been a tweaking of strategy here and there. But at the heart of the 10th Plan is still the same model of state-dominated development, and ethnic and crony preference that has driven all the other Malaysia Plans.