Latest plan: The 13MP is more compact and modest than its predecessors, as it is focusing more on ‘pocket-sized reforms’. — ZHAFARAN NASIB/The Star.
THE 13th Malaysia Plan 2026-2030 (13MP) that was launched in July strikingly declares a mission of “Redesigning Development”. The country’s 70-year-old planning practice remains an important reference for Malaysia’s development strategy and financing.
The 13MP is ambitious in its scope, particularly as it pertains to moving the country up the value-added ladder. This challenge has found a newfangled phrase – economic complexity – but the challenge remains pretty much the same.
The release of the 13MP is not synchronised with the electoral cycle, but Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s administration has enjoyed a long runway to make its policy imprint since taking power in November 2022. Having propagated Anwar’s Madani economy for two years, the 13MP aspires to realise it.
The 13MP’s five-year RM430mil allocation for development approximates 19% of total public expenditure.
The 13MP is more compact and modest than its predecessors. Its 211 pages take up less shelf space than the 12MP (556 pages) and the 11MP (389 pages).
In the words of its chief supervisor, Datuk Seri Rafizi Ramli, the Economy minister from December 2022 to May 2025, the 13MP focuses on “pocket-sized reforms”.
Rafizi’s abrupt resignation (following an internal party election loss) had sparked concerns of last-minute revamps, but he has expressed satisfaction that the core content has been retained in the final published version.
Another reason for the thinner document is the difficulty of reaching consensus and buy-in among the diverse and sometimes disparate partners of the Madani government’s 18-party coalition. In such circumstances, it is more feasible – and possibly advantageous – to provide broad signals while leaving the specifics to the relevant ministries.
The 13MP’s four pillars include two – accelerating public service reforms, and enhancing people’s wellbeing while fostering environmental sustainability – that reaffirm existing priorities, with changes in emphasis and application.
However, the other two pillars stand out for casting old challenges in a new light.
First, the decades-long endeavour of building a high-productivity, high-value economy has a new focal point: economic complexity. The term is derived from a straightforward principle: the more products a country or region churns out, and the more complex the products are, the greater the prosperity.
Second, the enduring national project of reducing inequality will be guided by the theme of social mobility.
The concept is not entirely new. The country has prioritised a high-value economy for decades. The 7MP (1996-2000) identified the need to “accelerate the shift towards higher value-added activities” as a “major challenge”.
One of the 8MP’s (2001-2005) critical thrusts was to develop “a knowledge- based economy as a strategic move to raise the value added of all economic sectors and optimise the brain power of the nation”.
Catching up with the continually expanding frontiers of technological adoption and innovation was never going to be quick and easy. But Malaysia has chronically fallen short of aspirations, and the message of building a high-tech, high-productivity, high-income economy was getting stale.
The New Industrial Master Plan (NIMP) 2030 launched in September 2023, Malaysia’s fourth since 1986, introduced a fresh perspective by articulating economic complexity as its first national mission. Malaysia’s score on the benchmark Economic Complexity Index has stagnated in the past decade.
Reinforcing the NIMP2030, the 13MP envisions economic complexity not just in making more sophisticated and high-value products but also in owning and dispersing the know-how.
Adopting and innovating technology in the fields of artificial intelligence, digitalisation, green economy, and food sufficiency pose daunting challenges, and Malaysia has a narrow window to make its mark both domestically and globally.
The 13MP’s resolve to move from “Made in Malaysia” to “Made by Malaysia” and to go beyond R&D to RDCI (research, development, commercialisation, and innovation), though, could help the country make the elusive breakthroughs.
By articulating social mobility as a defining theme, the 13MP recognises the persistent disadvantages low-income households face and the continual need to support Malaysia’s middle classes.
Previous generations rose above their parents’ stations by acquiring education, migrating to cities, and securing stable jobs.
A February 2025 World Bank report published in collaboration with the Economy Ministry has highlighted the narrowing of such upward pathways and the imperative of social mobility.
The 13MP aims to promote social mobility through universal provisions for all Malaysians, and special measures for targeted groups or geographical areas. The relevant measures include reforming education and labour markets, balancing regional and rural development, and elevating the socioeconomic status of ethnic majority and minorities, women, and other beneficiary groups.
Amid the array of interventions, quality education for all will be vital for cultivating economic complexity and enabling social mobility over the long haul. Educational participation continues to be prioritised, with compulsory participation extended to secondary schooling. Previously, this was only legally mandated for primary schooling.
However, education quality, while increasingly impactful on employment and economic prospects, remains one of the country’s glaring deficiencies.
In 2013, the Education Blueprint audaciously aimed for Malaysia to be among the top one-third in international standardised tests by 2028, which would translate into a ranking of 14th or better out of 42 countries in the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). In the TIMSS 2023 round of eighth-grade assessments, Malaysia ranked 35th out of 42 in mathematics, scoring 411 (close to Oman and Chile), and 32nd out of 42 in science, scoring 426 (similar to Kuwait and Brazil).
In both subjects, Malaysia is in the bottom one-third, far from the world average score of 478. Perhaps injected with a dose of realism, the 13MP strives to match the world average by 2030.
The 13MP’s apparent choice of steady progress over stratospheric ambition in education could be extrapolated to the national development project.
Persevering in the difficult challenges of economic complexity and social mobility would help Malaysia develop capability and enhance wellbeing, transcend world averages, and take its place among the advanced economies.
Lee Hwok-Aun is Senior Fellow of the Regional Economic Studies Programme, and co-coordinator of the Malaysia Studies Programme, Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute. He was previously senior lecturer in development studies at Universiti Malaya.
This article was originally published on Fulcrum, the institute’s blog. The views expressed here are solely the writer’s own.
