Malaysia: Best kept secret?

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I spent my holiday week in Kuala Lumpur to join my Singapore-based son and his family. It was, after all, a season of joy and it is always a joy to be with our grandkids.

I have visited Malaysia several times since my first visit in 1969 as member of a delegation of the UP Student Council to meet with our counterparts in the University of Malaya.

Malaysia at that time was a developing country like ours. But I got the impression we were ahead of them. Manila was a bustling metropolis compared to KL back in 1969.

The next time I visited was in 1981 as part of the Philippine delegation for a conference of the ASEAN Council on Petroleum. I was with PNOC at that time and my boss, then energy minister Geronimo Velasco, was attending a meeting of ASEAN energy ministers.

I was amazed at the progress I saw in KL. The roads were vastly improved and were better planned than ours. The modern skyscrapers were impressive. They have overtaken us.

Some years later, the Malaysian foreign ministry invited a group of Filipino journalists to visit. They showed us their development programs in action.

I remember visiting a research facility supporting their palm oil industry. I was impressed how their government invested in a budding industry that soon became a major export and foreign exchange earner for Malaysia. I felt sorry for our coconut farmers who have been contributing to a coconut development fund but were neglected, and left in poverty with their aging coconut trees.

What impressed me in all my visits to Malaysia is how they invested heavily on infrastructure. NLEX was at that time floundering under PNCC, badly maintained and managed. Malaysia already had a world-class expressway we took from KL to Malacca and that goes all the way to Singapore.

Today, KL’s infrastructure from roads, railroads, airports are obviously world class, compared to ours.

The other thing that also surprised me in today’s visit is how the cost of living, from groceries to restaurant bills, seemed cheaper than in Manila.

Just to make sure I got this impression correctly, I asked my niece who was assigned as an expat executive in KL by an American multinational three years ago. This was her reply to my question:

“Hi Tito Boo!!! Yessss KL is MUUUUUCH cheaper than the Philippines - From gasoline (its only 28 pesos/ liter for locals) to food, to property, to outlet shopping. The infrastructure is amazing where you’ve got skyscrapers, highways but wrapped in a jungle.

“Exchange rate is 14.5 php = 1 myr now though. When I came in 2022 it was only 12.5. Its gone up 16 percent in three years! Malaysia is SEA’s best kept secret.”

Because of higher salaries and lower cost of living, the purchasing power of a worker in KL is considerably stronger than for a comparable Filipino worker.

Malaysia attracts the most number of tourists in ASEAN, ahead of Thailand. They are still running the “Malaysia, truly Asia” campaign, some 30 years  after a Filipina advertising creative director conceptualized it.

We, on the other hand, change campaigns with every new tourism secretary. And they spend serious money for promotions, unlike the peanuts we allocate each year.

I was amazed to learn that Hyatt alone has seven hotels in Kuala Lumpur. That  kind of investment shows their tourism numbers are for real.

I have been wondering why the Malaysians did so much better than us. Their people are Malay and Chinese like ours. Their politics, and corruption of politicians are like ours.

Two things come to mind: their justice system works and they have long term plans they implement seriously.

The Economist reported last week: “Najib Razak was sentenced to 15 years in prison for abusing power and money laundering in the largest trial yet related to Malaysia’s 1MDB scandal. The country’s high court ruled that the former prime minister used his office to move vast sums from the country’s sovereign-wealth fund to his personal accounts a decade ago. Mr Najib, who denies wrongdoing, has been in prison since 2022.”

Najib’s political partymates tried to get him out of jail but the Supreme Court said no. Justice prevails. Even the nepo princeling that Najib is must be jailed for corruption.

Then there is the long term Vision 2020 launched in 1991 by then-PM Mahathir Mohamad, aiming for Malaysia becoming a self-sufficient, industrialized nation by 2020.

Here is how PM Mahathir assessed the outcome of Vision 2020 as reported by Bernama, the national news agency.

“Although we did not fully realize the vision, we have to a certain extent achieved Vision 2020. If we compare the Malaysia of today with Malaysia at the time the vision was launched in 1991, we can see the difference.

“The people are more prosperous, the country is more prosperous and development is evident throughout the country with better infrastructure. The fact is, many aspects of Vision 2020 have been achieved.”

But, he said, Malaysia has not achieved developed country status.

“To become a developed country, we have to overcome nine challenges: fostering a united country. A society with a liberated spirit, a democratic society, a moral and ethical society, a liberal society, a scientific and progressive society, a caring society an economically just society, and a prosperous society.”

We are doomed. We will remain third world for very much longer. We don’t even have leaders who think of long term reforms like Dr. Mahathir.

The only one who seemed to have thought like Dr. Mahathir was FVR under the influence of his close adviser Gen. Joe Almonte. They battled our oligarchy and dismantled PLDT’s monopoly under the Cojuangcos, for example. All our other Presidents thought short term with orientations that are too local and family centered.

Can we ever catch up?

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on X, @boochanco