By Sherilyn Goh
As tanking oil and commodity prices hurt national coffers, we are on the back foot in becoming a high-income nation. Tiger wonders if R&D commercialisation will be the magic pill to the conundrum.
While we have long aspired to achieving the status of becoming a high-income, developed nation for more than a couple of decades now, and as we inch closer than ever to 2020, how far have we gotten in reaching our goals so far?
With the tanking of oil and commodities prices which have undeniably hurt national coffers, and what’s more with Malaysia being the sole major exporter of oil and commodities in the Asia-Pacific region, it is not before long that we ought to look to other sustainable revenue streams.
Wilfred Madius Tangau
Hence Tiger’s interest was piqued when Science, Technology and Innovation (Mosti) Minister Wilfred Madius Tangau said his ministry is eyeing to commercialise more innovative products in 2016, with a target of 60 products to be commercialised yearly until 2020 and a commercialisation rate of 15% by then.
Commercialisation is the process of introducing a new product or production method into commerce, or in other words, bringing the end-products developed in laboratories to the mass market.
What’s more, year 2016 was announced in Budget 2016 to be known as the Innovative Product Commercialisation Year by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.
Stripping away the brouhaha, however, Tiger would like to point out that this is no more than a recycling of new year resolutions, as 2014 had already been a commercialisation year, and what’s most notable at first sight upon a Google search had been the 1MCY vehicle number plates to promote the Mosti Commercialisation Year. Tiger digresses.
On a more serious note, in Commercialisation Year 2014, Madius’ predecessor, Ewon Ebin, has previously been tasked with the same responsibility. While figures reflecting their results are not readily accessible via public domain, the fact that Ewon’s successor is tasked with the same goal and the recycling of resolution go to show that we are far from achieving the targets.
With a current commercialisation rate estimated at 8.3% after two consecutive Malaysian Plans spanning a decade, Tiger wonders what would exponentially double the figures to around 15% by 2020, which is a mere four years’ time away from now keeping all things constant.
This is also not to mention that 2010 had been previously declared the “Year of Innovation”, whereas 2012 has been dubbed the “Year of Innovation Movement” by Najib.
While R&D has been the buzzword much thrown about in the past few decades with millions pumped into the activity by the government, without bringing these R&D outputs into the market, the resources dedicated to R&D may well be end up in oblivion.
To put things into perspective, RM741 million was allocated for R&D under the 10th Malaysia Plan that ran from 2011 to 2015, which more than doubled the RM285 million handed out in the Ninth Malaysia Plan, according to a news report.
With an R&D expenditure to gross domestic product of 0.63%, a figure which is relatively meagre compared to that of other more developed economies such as Singapore (2.2%), Germany (2.3%), Taiwan (2.3%), China (2.08%), and Japan (3.67%), we clearly still have a lot of catching up to do in closing ranks.
In terms of the number of engineers and technical researchers per million population, we are completely out of league at 367, compared to Singapore (5,713), South Korea (4,162), Taiwan (4,159) and Japan (5,148).
Hence it somewhat baffles Tiger to think that R&D commercialisation alone will bring us to achieving our high-income goals, when our own R&D investment is subpar to other countries to begin with.
With the bulk of the responsibility on developing R&D and its subsequent commercialisation residing on Mosti – which is by the way allocated a RM1.5 billion budget in 2016 – it puzzles Tiger that more has not been done to instead incentivise the private sector to come up with their own R&D initiative.
Instead of blindly acquiring technology we should also be able to build and sustain technological capabilities of our own.
The national automotive project, Proton is a prime example. With an estimated RM1.6 billion spent on R&D for each car model, it is ludicrous that we are still unable to come up with our own car models. Where is the technological transfer that we have been harping about for decades?
It is about time we seriously consider our technological blueprint, if we are at all serious about becoming a developed, high-income nation. Because on their own, things like calling it a commercialisation year every two years or coming up with commemorating car plates just aren’t bringing us any closer.
GRRRRR!!!
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