Today the star paper wrote an article on the MSC status of penang (
here). Seems pretty impressive doesn't it?
Let me bring your attention to:
Multimedia Development Corporation (MDC) officials said some of the means that will be explored include the creation of high-value jobs, shared services and outsourcing opportunities in Malaysia.
.
.
.
He said the most significant achievement of the MSC is that it has laid a solid foundation for the nation's hopes of achieving an information-rich and knowledge-driven economy.
.
.
.
“A survey conducted by Deloitte Consulting notes that Malaysia is one of the likely beneficiaries of about US$250mil (RM950mil) worth of job shifts from the United States to other parts of the world.
I believe I have been reading 'high-value- job since the beginning of the creation of the MSC 10 years or so ago. Apparently today, we are still talking about generating such jobs... what is the result of it?
The result is that not so recently, we found out that our nation has the highest concentration of contractor. (... and unofficially, people not happy that the government is not spending on building anymore!!)
To be fair, there has been some high value jobs created. I just wonder what % of increase is that compared to 10 years ago and compared to other nations like south korea or china or india or japan?
Indeed the most significant achievement of the MSC is laying the foundation of future hope. Perhaps that's all there is - a foundation of hope. To be fair again, there is also some infrastructure laid down. But after 10 years, we're still talking about a business potential that the MSC could possible provide. That to me is a rather dubios measurement of success.
A survey by a consulting company indicates that there are a great potential out there. Which is great. Last year the internet generated 22billion (if I'm not mistaken) and Malaysia is really in position to take a piece of that cake. Well so is the rest of the world. It really doesn't mean anything when we say there's such an amount there waiting to be grabbed. However, what I feel would be more meaningful is how well positioned is Malaysia up for the outsourcing job? Are our people more skilled? Can we add more value? How are we compared to our competitors. Saying that there are outsourcing opportunities out there just meaningless.
Potential and opportunities are just there, always there.
******
At this moment, Malaysia has less then 2% broadband penetration rate. That's really bad. What happened? This is not just bad it's almost shameful. Some parts of KL/PJ can't even get connected to. And TM remains - TOMORROW... you call balik tomorrow k? No, TM reported a growth in their profits for the last ending fiscal year, so they are not running into a problem where they can't afford the hardware setups. Perhaps they should further decentralise the monopoly that TM has, so as to increase competition. TM has just done a very bad job.
If I mentioned Singapore for us to compare, we'll all be crying foul because it's just a small city, okay how about comparing it to countries like south korea which is having 70-80% penetration rate. How about Japan? USA? Australia? Okay, how about China and India?
Besides the infracstruture, our local industry is saying that we don't have enough knowledge workers. (I thought Malaysia's an education hub?) . The star reported this a couple months back too. What happened? Is that a reflection on the standards of our local universities?
We started MSC earlier or about the same time as many countries. I think it's time we compare ourselves with other better countries and raise our level of competitiveness as a nation.
