Malaysia could reach high-income nation status as early as 2028 amid better-than-expected economic growth and a strengthening currency, a top World Bank economist has said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Malaysia is on track to hit the milestone after the Washington, DC-based lender raised the country\u2019s 2024 growth forecast from 4.3 percent to 4.9 percent, Apurva Sanghi, lead economist for Malaysia, said on Thursday.
Higher growth is translating to better living standards, which, paired with a stronger ringgit, have put higher-income status \u201cwithin reach\u201d, Apurva said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Malaysia\u2019s economy is 12 percent larger than before the COVID-19 pandemic, putting it ahead of every Southeast Asian country apart from Singapore, Apurva added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis also means M\u2019sia could reach high-income status as early as 2028 \u2013 assuming continuing reforms \u2013 and luck,\u201d Apurva wrote in a post on X.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apurva called on the government to focus on reforms to ensure progress, including unwinding fuel subsidies and tackling the underemployment of some 2 million Malaysians working in jobs for which they are overqualified.
\u201cIn summary, yes, the economy is currently in a good place,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut it can be in an even better place if we tackled the under-employment issue that affects the hearts, minds, morale of millions of young, aspiring Malaysians.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Malaysia\u2019s economy grew 3.7 percent in 2023, after an 8.7 percent expansion the previous year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The World Bank defines high-income countries as those with a gross national income per capita of $14,005 or higher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Malaysia could reach high-income nation status as early as 2028 amid better-than-expected economic growth and a strengthening currency, a top World Bank economist has said. Malaysia is on track to hit the milestone after the Washington, DC-based lender raised the country\u2019s 2024 growth forecast from 4.3 percent to 4.9 percent, Apurva Sanghi, lead economist for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58,"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions\/58"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}