for development. The results can be seen today; we made progress step by step, diversifying the economic base.”
rope, we went to France, Germany, Brit- ain, all over – and the investors came. We have a lot of investors here who came be- cause initially there were no taxes for them – for the first 10 years. We gave them all sorts of incentives and we left them alone.
Q: What lessons have you learned from the financial crises of the past few decades, especially the ones in Asia? How did you cope? A: Well, in Asia, the first crisis was started in Tailand. Te earthquake started there.
We handled it. Malaysia handled it in its own way. Before the crisis, we were told by the world – banks, countries – to open our market. But when the crisis happened, we closed the market. We were criticised by everybody, but when everybody looked at our history of crisis management, we were the only ones who did it right, that’s how we survived it. We imposed capital control. We were not afraid. Everybody, the whole world, including the banks and the Europeans said no, no, no. We were the only one to impose capital control and we
“When Malaysia got independence, we went
survived. We had no capital flight, because of the control. Ten, we went for internally integrated development. We have the mon- ey again. We are happy because the money is still there. Te other thing I forgot to tell you – we are also one of the few oil and gas producing countries in south Asia. We had made a lot of money from oil and gas and used the money wisely for internal development. So we were a bit insulated from the crisis, that’s how we survived. Now we are better at managing these
crises, because we are mentally ready, we have enough experience. We are laughing at the West: “Okay, you told us what to do. You did it, we did not follow it, we sur- vived it, and you did not. You messed up.”
Q: Ethnic balance is a priority in Malay- sia. How important a factor was it in the history of the country?
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