World Bank lead economist Apurva Sanghi says one of the reasons why Malaysia is behind the digitalisation curve compared to other comparable countries, is that there is still restricted entry of foreign participants in the telecoms and network sector.
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00:00 Right, so if you look at digital services, so digitalization has been a centerpiece of
00:08 the 12th Malaysia Plan and every single government initiative since.
00:13 And if you look at what we discovered, so digital services, if you look at what we discovered
00:18 in our MEM last, in February, we found that one of the reasons why Malaysia is behind
00:25 the digitalization curve compared to other comparable countries is that there is still
00:32 restricted entry, ease of entry of foreign participants in the telecoms and network sector.
00:39 Right, so opening this up to more foreign participation, for example, could be helpful.
00:46 And if you look at, if you remove all the services that I mentioned, digital, legal,
00:50 financial, accounting, etc., according to the OECD's Service Trade Restrictiveness Index,
00:58 the figure that I showed, where Malaysia is the eighth most restrictive country when it
01:01 comes to services, amongst the 50 odd countries, legal services are also quite protected in
01:08 the case of Malaysia.
01:09 You know, so you need legal services, you need digital services, you need accounting
01:14 services to, even for manufacturing, to increase both your quality and quantity of manufacturing
01:22 services.
01:23 So if your inputs are constrained in the manufacturing, for example, then you won't get the desired
01:29 bang for the buck.
01:30 So opening up services, liberalizing services for Malaysia is important.
01:36 Thank you.
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