Boost National Productivity Rate To Four Per Cent Annually - PM Najib

PORT KLANG (Klang, Malaysia), March 15 (Bernama) -- The Malaysia's productivity rate must be increased to four per cent every year from the current 2.3 per cent to ensure the goal of making Malaysia a high income nation can be achieved, says Najib Razak. The prime minister said the issue of the country's productivity which was closely associated with the skills of workers needed to be emphasised to achieve a developed nation status. "One of the things closely related to the question of workers' skills is the issue of productivity, we want the country's productivity increase to touch four per cent every year, now we have only reached 2.3 per cent. "I urge all parties to focus not only on increasing employment but how the productivity of every worker can be increased to at least, four per cent each year," he said. He was speaking at a programme themed, 'Skilled Workers Are The Heartbeat to National Transformation 2050' here Wednesday. Meanwhile, Najib said one of the criteria needed to achieve developed nation status and advanced economy was that the people should have high income, and high income depended directly on the level of skills and education of the individual. "This is because when we mention that we want more highly skilled workers, then it is closely related to, not only in terms of industrial needs, but also supports the government's efforts to transform the country into a developed high income nation. "...and the people enjoy appropriate monthly income in a developed nation," he said. Najib noted that only 28 per cent of Malaysians comprised those with high skills and the government wanted to increase it up to 35 per cent by 2020. He said this was because a skilled workforce was capable of generating value-added work besides contributing to higher productivity and income. The prime minister said if the country was at a low skilled workers' level in whatever field, then every employee would earn a relatively low income if their respective productivity was not boosted. Conversely, if employees adopted a multi-skill and multi-tasking approach, they would definitely be paid high salaries. --BERNAMA