Only one percent of Malaysians are poor, the Performance and Management Delivery Unit (Pemandu) said in its Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) 2014 annual report released today.

Citing preliminary data from the Department of Statistics, Pemandu CEO Idris Jala said this is a result of the ETP.

He said this is an improvement from 2009, when 3.8 percent of Malaysians lived below the poverty line.

"Over the years, we have seen tremendous success in poverty eradication. This also represents a far cry from the first records of poverty in Malaysia collected in 1970, when 49.3 percent, or almost half, of the population was living in poverty.

“A 2013 survey carried out by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) found that Malaysia recorded a 55.3 percent reduction in the percentage of population living below the poverty line, the biggest reduction among Asean countries,” he said.

In comparison, Indonesia and Vietnam both recorded a six percent reduction whilst the Philippines recorded a meagre 2.5 percent reduction those living below the poverty line in the same period.

Absolute poverty, on the other hand, is a measurement based on the declared poverty line. In Peninsular Malaysia, this is fixed at RM763, RM912 in Sarawak and RM1,048 in Sabah.

But the relative poverty line in 2012 was RM1,813, or half of the household median income of RM3,626

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The poverty line for Peninsular Malaysia is RM763 monthly income, while it is RM912 in Sarawak and RM1,048 in Sabah.
M912 in Sarawak and RM1,048 in Sabah.

Cash assistance

ADB noted that this was achieved in Malaysia through cash assistance, 1AZAM programmes which offer microcredit facilities to encourage entrepreneurship among low-income families, healthcare, education, housing and more, Idris said.

Preliminary data from the Statistics Department 2014 Household Income Survey also found that household income has grown.

Both mean and median household incomes grew by 8.4 percent between 2012 and 2014.

GNI per capita has grown to USD10,426 in 2014: @NajibRazak #TransformasiUtkSemua @idrisjala_ @gtproadmap pic.twitter.com/4QRy7NKq48

— ETP Roadmap (@etp_roadmap) April 28, 2015

The ETP annual report noted that this was higher than the corresponding inflation rate of 2.6 percent per annum.

It said the bottom 40 percent group registered a higher mean income growth of 11.9 percent.

This means Malaysia is on track to get high income nation status in 2020.

Launched in 2010, ETP measures Malaysia’s progress towards high-income status using key targets such as reaching US$15,001 in GNI per capita, creating US$444 billion in investments, and 3.3 million employment opportunities by 2020.

At current exchange rates (US$1=RM3.57), Malaysia’s current GNI per capita is 63.7 percent of the US$15,001 goal, while 54.5 percent of the targeted 3.3 million jobs have been created, as ETP approaches the halfway mark towards 2020.