The Zimbabwe-ization of Malaysia

Malaysia is one of the countries most affected by brain drain. About 1.7 million Malaysians are working overseas, with 54 percent of them in Singapore, 15 percent in Australia, 10 percent in the United States, and 5 percent in the United Kingdom. This is reportedly because of the lack of career prospects in Malaysia, not only for non-Bumiputeras, but for Bumiputeras as well. Many Malays have gone overseas to work in higher education, medicine, research and the management sectors. Many blame the repressive corporate culture within universities, the civil service and corporations.

Although the brain drain has slowed due to the Covid-19 crisis, the government's insistence on enforcing repressive equity policies and overall poor growth of the economy to provide lucrative markets for new innovations, will no doubt speed up the exodus of qualified professional once again, when travel is fully open once again.

The government has long acknowledged the problem through the formation of the Talent Corporation Malaysia Berhad (Talentcorp) to bring back talent to the country as long ago as 2011. Talentcorp approved 5,366 applicants to date. However, bureaucratic complexities and strict immigration rules forbidding their non-Malaysian spouses to work, gain permanent resident status, and citizenship, makes return for many impossible.

Due to Malaysia's current repressive regulatory framework, local innovation-based company start-ups are being hindered. Malaysia is becoming unattractive as the location of international high-tech companies. The World Bank Groupranked Singapore the second-best country in ease of doing business, while Malaysia was ranked 12^th in the 2019 survey.

Malaysia will be greatly disadvantaged during the region's recovery from the Covid-19 crisis if it doesn't have domestic driven innovation to attract international high-tech investment. At the same time, Malaysia's infrastructure and cost base is relatively unattractive to other locations like Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia. This means Malaysia will lose out big time with pundits expecting a renaissance as the world comes out of the pandemic. Don't expect one in Malaysia.