Tuesday, December 24, 2013

“The Role of Malaysia in Shaping the World’s Economy in the 21st Century” - Kuala Lumpur Perdana Foundation Dialogue Series


“Mastering in economy, may lead you to rule the world”. At least, this is what Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J Dubner want their readers to know in their sequel novel entitled Super Freakonomics (2009). By that means, I believed this is why the organizer had chosen this title to be the title for this essay competition. The answer is easy; we want to become one of the great leaders in our world. Being the main player for shaping the world’s economy means that we are in a position that the world is looking into us, just like China nowadays. For me, I couldn’t agree more, this is very important for us to become one of the great leaders in our world because our voice will be heard and as our role as an Islamic country, this will be a great channel for us in order to put our opinions or pressure in which the issue of Islam being threaten. For example, the ethnic clashes between Uighur and Han Chinese in China, the Rohingya conflict in Myanmar and at the uttermost of world peace which is Palestine issue. As you can see, the impact of us shaping the world’s economy is not only benefits us, but also other’s countries especially Islamic country.

Specifically for me, I believed that in order for us to achieve our goal in shaping the world’s economy, we need transformation on what we have done presently which are Islamic banking and Halal food industry. I am suggesting these two industries because despite our reputation as the best Islamic country, we also have created the Islamic banking system. On top of that, we also have been globally recognized as the world’s Halal food hub. These clearly indicate to us that these two industries are our strong factor in order to become one of the important players in the world’s economy. Thus, I am suggesting for Islamic banking system our target is not for domestic consumers, but our aim is to focus on international trades between other countries and us as well as oversees consumers. We probably should start with the countries that having low GDP as compared to us in our region. The reason behind this is because, we could say, these group of countries does not have many options, unless to agree to our terms which in this situation is using Islamic banking system. From this point, the world will realize that Islamic banking system is the best banking system in term of long projection period and until then; we suppose to promote this system to the domestic consumers in other countries. On the contrary, the same concept we should imply to our Halal food industry. We should establish our Halal food as the world will become dependent onto it. This could be done by promoting our research on the importance of consuming Halal foods in order to sustain our healthiness as well as establishing us as the best Halal food manufacturer in this world. Exactly like the Americans were doing to their soybean industry.

Well, unfortunately, I could not explained more on this idea as the words indicator has showed it is approaching 500 words. In conclusion, in order for us to become the world’s economic shaper, we should use our ‘strong factor’ to play the role as this will make us slightly easy in achieving our goal.

Thank you.