Malaysia Petroleum Resources Corp (Photo: etp.pemandu.gov.my)

According to government data, Malaysia is said to be on the way towards achieving all eight MDGs; commitment is reflected in the Tenth Malaysia Plan (2011-2015). But Malaysia’s development trajectory has hitherto primarily been driven by a combination of low worker wages amidst high revenues for petroleum, palm oil and rubber commodities and foreign direct investment in the manufacturing sector. In other words, very little of the profits in the form of oil royalties, for example, have gone towards developing the states that produce a large bulk of the oil, such as Kelantan, Terengganu, Sabah and Sarawak, but which happen also to be the poorest states in Malaysia.

And while the government announced its motto to be “People First, Performance Now” and its goals to reduce crime; fight corruption; improve student outcomes; raise living standards of low-income households; improving rural basic infrastructure; and improve urban public transport, it appears that while lip-service has been paid, little pertaining to the structural and systemic inequities, inequalities and injustices of the political or social economy have been dealt with or addressed with any substance.

Malaysia’s inadequate financial, technological and market infrastructure and human capital have been pinpointed as reasons why it cannot compete in economically higher-value-added products and services.

Photo: Google

Despite that the poverty level in Azerbaijan decreased by 1.5 % and amounted to 7.6 % in 2011, share of poorest quintile in national income also diminished.
Most recently several projects were launched, the main priority is social and human development.

Revenues from the oil sector could be allowed financing projects required to reach those aims by 2015. But interestingly that even in Azerbaijan receiving large revenues from oil, there wasn’t rapid increase in public funding for the social sector.

The Government rather prefers to accumulate the surplus in the special oil fund and plan to use it to push forward big infrastructure projects.

Since joining the Euro in 1999, Portugal has had the lowest growth in the Eurozone. Between 2001 and 2007 Portugal experienced only 1.1% average annual growth. The government deficit was -6.5% of GDP in 2005 and it was -3.1% in 2007. When the global financial crisis occurred, a drop in tax revenues and the money allocation to support commercial banks, led to further increases in the government deficit and in general gross debt. At 108.1% in 2011, Portugal had the third highest general government gross debt to GDP ratio in Europe (EU27), behind only Greece and Italy (Eurostat, 2012a). As debt continued to grow investors were unwilling to lend and in May 2011 Portugal was the third country to seek a ‘bailout’ from the EU-ECB-IMF troika. The austerity measures accorded between the Portuguese Government and troika, are responsible for major setbacks. Many basic economic and social rights that were guaranteed are now being either questioned or neglected. In this scenario, the development cooperation public policy that contributed significantly to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) also suffered a major negative shift.

The policy response to the 2008 financial crisis, was the implementation of a progressive stringent set of austerity measures: freezing of nearly all insurance benefits and pensions, reducing the pensions tax allowance, reduction in means-tested unemployment assistance, family benefit and social assistance, increase in standard VAT rate (from 20% to 23%) including increasing the VAT on natural gas and electricity to standard rate, increase in income tax rates and reductions of tax credits, public sector pay cuts (up to 10%), reductions in numbers of employees in central Government and across public administration generally.

The scale of resource needs for the post-2015 and sustainable development agendas, although yet to be fully quantified, provides a serious challenge for aligning expectations of an ambitious post-2015 agenda with the implementation of that agenda.  To bridge this gap, it is crucial that Africa, hitherto considered to be significantly dependent on external resources for financing its development, puts forward its vision of how the financing issue should be addressed.

African thinkers, parliamentarians and civil society organisations who gathered in Midrand, South Africa, hosted by the Pan African Parliament, articulated what is emerging as a growing consensus in various fora taking place on the continent: ‘the building blocks of development’ have to be front and centre in the post-2015 discussions; and the imperative to underpin a developmental/structural transformation has to inform the approach taken to governance (developmental governance), financing and the global developmental partnerships, as well as the socio-economic development goals and targets.