Malaysia’s Mahathir: NEP has created more graduates, but bumiputras still ‘lack business skills’
- The former PM played a key role in the formation of the 1971 policy that benefits the majority Malay and native population
- In this interview, he reflects on the programme’s early days, its flaws and successes, as well as the outlook for young Malays amid a Covid-hit economy
Malaysia’s elder statesman Mahathir Mohamad recently spoke to This Week in Asia on the New Economic Policy (NEP), the 50-year-old affirmative action programme that benefits the country’s majority Malays and aboriginal groups, known as “bumiputras” (sons of the soil).
The 96-year-old politician twice served as Malaysia’s prime minister, including a stint from 1981 to 2003, during which the NEP was broadly expanded.
Mahathir backed the continuation of the NEP, also known as the bumiputra policy, during his 2018-2020 premiership under the aegis of the reform-minded, multiracial Pakatan Harapan alliance.
First promulgated in 1971 by Mahathir’s political mentor Abdul Razak Hussein, the NEP envisioned the target groups would control 30 per cent of corporate equity by 1990.
Observers say Mahathir’s advocacy played a key role in the policy’s birth. In 1970, following bloody racial riots between ethnic Malays and Chinese, he wrote the book The Malay Dilemma, which argued that the majority group needed state aid to ensure they would not become subservient to minorities in their own homeland.
Currently the country’s bumiputra community controls 17.2 per cent of corporate equity compared to 25.5 per cent in the hands of minority groups, and the NEP remains in place in various forms.
