Zeti: Venture into third national car only if there's comparative advantage

Zeti(filepic), who was the governor of Bank Negara, replaces Tan Sri Abdul Wahid Omar who resigned from the board on June 30, said Sime Darby Property in a statement yesterday.

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia should venture into an industry that has a comparative advantage when considering a third national car, says former Bank Negara Governor Tan Sri Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz.

She said that if the government wanted to venture into a third national car, it should asks itself if it had the comparative advantage because resources were limited.

"We should channel resources to areas where we have a comparative advantage, where we have the leading edge to venture into the frontiers of that industry," Dr Zeti said during a panel discussion on "The Economic Agenda - Mahathir-nomics 2.0 and Vision 2020 Revisited" at the Youth Economic Forum 2018 on Saturday (Oct 27).

She said at this point the government needed to address debt accumulation and areas of inefficiency and leakages in order to remedy the country's financial situation.

It was important for the country to do this before it could move forward, she stressed.

Dr Zeti said the government had to look at the risk factors because there were no resources to bail out failed projects.

"That's why this has to be thought through carefully," said Dr Zeti, who is currently Permodalan Nasional Bhd Group Chairman.

The idea of setting up a third national car project has been in the spotlight ever since Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said several times that the government wished to launch a third national car project after Proton and Perodua.

On why South Korea could successfully build their car industy while Malaysia couldn't, Dr Zeti said Korea had identified a strategic direction for doing this.

"They took care of every aspect of it, from having it located in certain places to preparing the workforce in terms of the education system, which started from the school and technical level and universities," she said, adding that the country's integrated approach helped to produce a successful outcome.

Khazanah Nasional Bhd director Dr Sukhdave Singh said that if the third national car project were to be taken up, it should be done on one condition – that those who propose the project must put their own money into it.

"There must be no government subsidies and no large-scale injection of taxpayers' money.

"If a third car project is commercially viable, private money goes into it, what is the problem?" he asked.