High-income status meaningful if rakyat gains

Quah Boon Huat: While achieving high-income status is certainly not a bad thing, the important question is not how fast we can achieve it but what it will mean for the rakyat. Will it mean, for example, that there will be more decent jobs with higher incomes? Will it mean that life will become less of a financial struggle?

MALAYSIA’s’s progress towards achieving high-income status has been accompanied by rising income inequality in recent years. Amid unprecedented economic pain caused by the pandemic, should we continue to obsess over high income?

In 2020, Malaysia’s gross national income per capita came in at US$10,580 (RM44,647), just US$1,956 (RM8,254) shy of the World Bank’s high-income threshold of US$12,536 (RM52,901). The World Bank is optimistic that we can make the cut within the next few years.