Intensive devt, required foreign labour

“The tin mining and rubber industries ( then) were highly labour intensive and their development could not be sustained with local labour supply.

“Large inflows of foreign workers were recruited from China and India with the result that the population shares of these two communities increased substantially,” the book chronicled.

Sultan Nazrin recounted that most Chinese were drawn to the new towns developing around the tin mines and to the port cities, while the Indians mainly lived and worked in the rubber estates.

Migration markedly changed the Peninsula’s ethnic composition.

From colonial control, Malaya then moved to national economic management (Chapter 6), whereby it adopted a laissez-faire economic system.

This, the book said, gave the British- dominated private sector – plantation and mining companies, agency houses, banks and middlemen – carte blanche to maximise profits, and provided a supportive legislative and institutional environment.

Laissez-faire practices led to highly uneven development with economic growth and prosperity concentrated in and mainly benefiting the Peninsula’s west coast states.

Sultan Nazrin noted that the practice also led to high levels of inequality in ownership and control of the economy.

The New Economic Policy was launched by the government in 1971, following the May 1969 racial clashes, to rectify inequalities of the colonial era.

“Foreign natural-resource-based companies were restructured through equity buyouts by publicsector enterprises and placed initially under government control and management.

“Resource revenues were used to redistribute income and reduce poverty through multiple pathways,” Sultan Nazrin narrated.

National control over economic managementwasaccompaniedbya long-term vision for a more unified and socially just nation, which led to an impressive track record in employment creation, welfare gains and poverty reduction. — Bernama