By ABDUL RAHMAN DAHLAN
COMMENT: Malaysia’s solid economic performance commensurate strongly with job creation in the labour market.
2. Since 2010 until 2016, 2.26 million jobs have been created of which 679,300 were high-skilled jobs.
3. Job creation since 2010 was broad-based but strongest in the services sector which created 1.78 million jobs during the period, in line with services sector being the biggest contributor to Malaysia’s economy with its share of contribution to GDP at 54 percent.
4. With the strong job creation, we are able to maintain the full employment level in the labour force with unemployment kept at low rate of 3 to 3.5 percent.
5. I attribute this excellent achievement to the Economic Transformation Program (ETP) envisioned by the Prime Minister Najib Razak.
6. The government has been implementing various initiatives to address the graduate and youth unemployment issue.
7. Since 2011, the government has introduced Skim Latihan 1Malaysia (SL1M) which has helped 130,000 graduates improve their marketability in the job market. As a result more than 90 per cent of the trainees have secured work either by the companies that trained them or by others.
8. Under TalentCorp, there are also Graduate-Career Accelerated Programme (GCAP), a six-week training programme designed to transform graduates into highly-employable executives for the service industry and Graduate Employability Management Scheme (GEMS) which equips fresh and unemployed graduates with industry-relevant skills and experience via a place-and-train methodology.
9. Apart from up-skilling and re-skilling programs, there are ample grant programmes, research and commercialisation funds and cradle investment funds for new businesses to choose from and there are also special funds for Malaysian youths who into starting or sustaining their own businesses.
10. The Young Entrepreneur Fund is one such fund introduced by the government through the SME Bank. With low interest rates, the SME Bank provides financing opportunities of up to RM100,000 and similarly, the Graduate Entrepreneur Fund, also known as TUS (Tabung Usahawan Siswazah) is a soft loan scheme aimed at graduates.
11. The government under the strong leadership of the Prime Minister will continue to provide stable economic growth to sustain more job creation for the people because economic growth by itself is meaningless if it doesn’t bring benefit to the people.
12. Being a responsible Government, Barisan Nasional will continue to provide solutions and looking at all possibilities to ensure more people are employed and at the same time making sure we deliver more world class talents.
• Abdul Rahman Dahlan is Minister in Prime Minister’s Department
