Period

Intervention

1960s

・ Adopted development planning

・ Tax holidays, guarantees (to foreign investors) of freedom to repatriate profits and capital

・ A modest degree of tariff protection was granted.

・ The main types of goods produced were consumer items such as batteries, paints, tires, and pharmaceuticals

・ Replanting rubber trees; the government offered grants to owners, financed by a special duty on rubber exports

・ Land development to facilitate commercial agriculture; with schemes to open up large areas of about 40,000 hectares, which were then subdivided into 10 acre/4 hectare blocks for distribution to small farmers from overcrowded regions who were either short of land or had none at all. Financial assistance (repayable) was provided to cover housing and living costs until the holdings became productive.

1970s-90s

・ Exports of oil and natural gas

・ Introduced Industry and New Economic Policy with the following aims

o to redistribute corporate equity so that the bumiputera (term to describe the Malay race and other indigenous peoples of Southeast Asia) share would rise from around 2 percent to 30 percent. The share of other Malaysians would increase marginally from 35 to 40 percent, while that of foreigners would fall from 63 percent to 30 percent.

o to eliminate the close link between race and economic function (a legacy of the colonial era) and restructure employment so that the bumiputera share in each sector would reflect more accurately their proportion of the total population (roughly 55 percent). In 1970 this group had about two-thirds of jobs in the primary sector where incomes were generally lowest, but only 30 percent in the secondary sector. In high-income middle class occupations (e.g. professions, management) the share was only 13 percent.

o To eradicate poverty irrespective of race. In 1970 just under half of all households in Peninsular Malaysia had incomes below the official poverty line. Malays accounted for about 75 percent of these.

・ Promoted export-oriented industrialisation (EOI) and set-up Free Trade Zones (FTZs); Firms locating there received concessions such as duty-free imports of raw materials and capital goods, and tax concessions,