Innovations key to Malaysia's economic growth, says Husni

JAKARTA, Nov 10 (Bernama) -- Second Finance Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah said innovations, which have come under government attention, would be key to bringing more economic growth for the country.

In this respect, the Malaysia Innovations Agency will play an important role in the efforts to commercialise the innovations of the country's institutions of higher learning for the global market.

"We have done the studies. If the country's gross national income in 2020 is based on the current economic structure, we will achieve RM1.8 trillion in terms of GNI, but with the innovations, we would be able to achieve more than that," he said during an interview here.

Ahmad Husni was here to attend the Asean Finance Ministers' Investor Seminar held Wednesday.

The minister said there were still many innovative discoveries from the institutes of higher learning that had yet to be exploited with universities currently having conducted research on 1,000 products yet to be commercialised.

"Through the agency for innovations, we have identified and found that 300 of the products have commercial potential.

"What we are doing is creating a system like a cluster, where the university is a researcher, the private sector is a producer while the government plays its role as a facilitator, and we create products of global standard."

Ahmad Husni said the government transformation programme led by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, has provided positive effects to the growth in foreign direct investments in Malaysia.

In 2009 FDI in Malaysia was low at US$5 billion, but in 2010 it was up at US$29 billion, a growth by six times.

For this year, FDI stood at US$21 billion as of June, also a high growth.

"In terms of competition, I believe the economic transformation programme had provided an edge and competitiveness to the country compared with other Asean countries," he said.

Malaysia also has tremendous potential, where it is now no longer just concentrating on high value added manufacturing operations and strengthening its services sector especially financial, tourism and others but also going for innovations, he said.

Two programmes have arrested the world's attention, with the first being the government transformation, which stresses on an effective and efficient delivery system.

The second is the economic transformation programme, which is not only an economic plan for 10 or 20 years but also outlines the sectors to be paid attention and products.

This not only makes it easier for investors coming to Malaysia but also make it easy for the implementation of the Malaysian plan.

Ahmad Husni said he was confident that Malaysia was in the right path in its road to achieve a developed status by 2020.

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