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Changing Phases of Malaysian Economy

By Samuel Bassey Okposin, et al.
December 1999
ASEAN Academic Press
ISBN: 1-901919-25-0
308 pages, 5 3/4" x 8 3/4"
$79.50 Hardcover

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This book examines the changing phases of the Malaysian economy since independence in 1957. Agriculture was the main source of growth in the early phase of development. In the 1960s and 1970s, import-substitution and export-oriented industrialization propelled economic growth. In the 1980s, investment and the growing service sector was the engine of growth. In the 1990s, the economy is sustained through productivity and industrial upgrading to higher value-added industries. Besides addressing the various cyclical downturns, as well as the speculative attack on Asian economies, this book also deals with issues pertaining to agricultural transformation, East Malaysian development, tourism development, privatization, environmental and manpower development. The arduous tasks involved in attaining the achievements of the last four decades were brought to a virtual standstill in mid-1997 due to the Asian financial crisis. However, the Malaysian economy has benefited much from the government's policy of selective capital controls, despite opposition. Besides breaking the vicious downward spiral that the exchange rate insatiability had set in motion, capital control measures were also used to minimize the negative impact of large short-term capital flows into and out of Malaysia.



Economics