Anwar wants Azmin, EPU to review 'failed' economic policies

Spurred by the recent UN report on Malaysian poverty, PKR president Anwar Ibrahim wants the government to review past economic policies which he said have failed.

"To address the issue, I strongly urge the government, particularly the Economic Planning Unit and the Economic Affairs Minister (Mohamed Azmin Ali) to recognise one of the greatest disasters and that is the failure of policies.

"When you get the diagnosis wrong, you have a bad injury in the left leg but you get the right leg amputated (instead)," he said tonight.

Anwar was speaking at a dinner hosted by the Kuala Lumpur and Selangor Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Kuala Lumpur.

Last month, UN special rapporteur Philip Alston said Malaysia's poverty line of RM980 per household, which translates to a poverty rate of 0.4 percent, was unrealistically low and it should be closer to 15 percent.

Azmin, who is Anwar's estranged deputy in PKR, had refuted Alston's report and defended the government's statistics.

However, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has conceded that there was a need to review the poverty line.

Anwar said one such fatally flawed policy is the New Economic Policy.

"After 40 years, the NEP has not been able to address poverty even among the Malays, which somewhat remains at par with 1971 levels," he said.

Anwar also reiterated his past remarks that the government should move away from racially-based policies to those based on needs instead.

He added the government must also grow the economy and attract investors with an Industrial Revolution 4.0-based digital economy.

Azmin had previously said that Putrajaya was committed to shifting towards needs-based policies in line with the government's "shared prosperity" policy.

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