ANSWERS TO ATTACKS ON MALAYSIAN ECONOMY

Consumer and investor confidence is a fragile thing and the some hardcore groups and their associated news media have been doing their best to undermine Malaysia''s economy and Malaysians.

Tell your fellow Malaysian these:

1) The Ringgit is currently undervalued versus the USD but a weak ringgit has benefits for our economy in the middle to long term as it boosts exports, reduces imports, promotes foreign investment and tourism to Malaysia - this means more money flows in to Malaysia.

Many countries in the world have also started deliberately devaluing their currencies to compete. This is why our trade surplus for the months of November and December have jumped much higher even as oil prices started to drop heavily during those two months.

2) The weakening Ringgit against the USD is very much due to a strengthening of the USA's currency and does not indicate a weakening of Malaysia's economy or our fundamentals. Currency traders and foreign investors are also under the impression that Malaysia is a commodity-based economy very dependent on oil.

Malaysia, being a net oil importing country actually benefits from the drop in oil prices. Countries that are similarly perceived to be commodity-based countries such as Australia and Canada have had their currencies drop against the USD much more severely than Malaysia.

Malaysia is different. We are a highly diversified economy and manufacturing exports is a big part of our economy and the lower Ringgit actually benefits Malaysia.

3) 1MDB has assets much bigger than its debt. And even if all the multi-billion land and 13 power plants in 1MDB is worth zero and govt has to take up all the RM42billion debt, it is just a small part of our govt debt and not even half of Petronas's cash reserves and is not even 6% of EPF's money. And this is assuming all the prime land and all power plants are worth zero.

4) If there is corruption or mismanagement in 1MDB, the govt would not have called for a full AG Audit of the company nor allow it to go to PAC.

5) GST will not kill our economy. If that is true then 90% of the world's countries who have already implemented GST would already be dead.  There is not a single economist or analyst in the world who is against Malaysia implementing GST.

GST has multiple benefits for our country including making sure the UNDERGROUND economy pays their share, reduces illicit outflows and keeping money back in our country and also allowing Malaysia to reduce personal and corporate tax.

6) Every single economic forecast for Malaysia says Malaysia's GDP growth for 2015 is at least 4% to 5.5%. These are very very good figures for any country and there is certainly no one else (other than hard core groups) forecasting Malaysia is going into recession.

7) Increased BR1M for 2015, reduced personal income tax, reduced petrol and electricity bills, continually lower car prices this year will put more money into the average consumer pockets and hence support our economy for greater growth.

The stock market agrees with this. After initially dropping almost 200 points in November and December due to an over-reaction and uncertainty, it has now gone back up above the 1,800 points barrier. Today it closed at 1825.54 points - not too far from our all-time high of 1890 level.

8) Hardcore anti- anything will never ever say good things about Malaysia. Even if the economy is good, they will say it is bad. It is just not in their interest to praise Malaysia or say the govt has done a good job. It is their job to continue saying bad things even if these are lies.  That's just the way the standard of our anti -Malaysian "citizens".