The government did not heed five essentials resulting in the country's negative growth rate of -1.7%, says a Selangor state senior officer.

 Speaking at the ‘No to GST, No to Taxes' forum last night in Petaling Jaya, chief executive officer of Selangor's economic advisor's office Rafizi Ramli listed the first as the government's over reliance on oil money.

From the year 1998 to 2009, the government relied on around 40% of the country's foreign oil money for expenditure while presenting deficit budgets at 7.4% within that period.

"In other countries, a budget deficit of 7.4% would've rung alarm bells, however, the government had relied on 50% of Petronas's income last year amounting to RM80 billion," he said before an audience of about 180.

The second point that the trained accountant raised was the rising capital outflow.

He said that the capital outflow peaked between January and July last year amounting to a mind-blowing RM355 billion from investors pulling out their portfolios.

List of rising woes

T factory workers sweatshops 090107 shoes he third, a recent joint Institute of Strategic and International Studies and University Malaya study also revealed a decline in the manufacturing sector.

That sector's value added growth has seen a steady slide., the study showed.

Between1990-1995 the growth stood at 11.6%, dropping to 4.0% in the 2000 to 2005 period. Current growth is expected to be nil.

The fourth is trade liberalisation which works best for countries that have a high percentage of human development .

He argued that though Malaysia accepted trade liberalization it does not score well where human development is concerned.

He said that percentage of human development is calculated on the number of engineers and researchers for every 1 million people as well as the percentage of the budget spent on research and development (R&D) by a government.

Comparatively speaking the number of engineers and researchers for every 1 million people for Malaysia stands at 367: 1,000,000 whereas for South Korea it is 4,100:1,000,000.

U-Turns turning away investors?

In terms of R&D spending, Malaysia pales at 0.64% when compared with Singapore's 2.3%.

The last essential to be overlooked, Rafizi said, is the savings-investments gap.

While Malaysians' savings stood at 43% with investment at 21% whereas for South Korea both are at 33%.

Meanwhile, Petaling Jaya Utara parliamentarian, Tony Pua who spoke earlier said that Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak's administration is being identified for its U-turns .

"The government has no political backbone," he added.

Citing the example of the New Economic Model, he said that it was supposed to be tabled in December last year but was postponed to June.

NONE He added that Umno is afraid of Ibrahim Ali's ( right ) Perkasa resulting in the Najib's inability to make real changes to the country's economy.

Another speaker, Klang MP Charles Santiago said that the country is facing a ‘crisis of mismanagement of public finances' that has led the government to shift to the Goods and Services tax (GST).

He told the audience that Malaysia is in a crisis as it is the sole ASEAN nation to register negative growth rate.

He also criticised government's plans to implement GST as it sends a wrong message to investors.

The forum was organised by Kg Tunku assemblyperson, Lau Weng San was also participated by Kuala Selangor MP, Dzulkifli Ahmad.