What claimed by the Second Finance Minister does not correspond with the global economic pattern which seems that we are the only country that is invincible to the economic onslaught. Maybe the rest of the world should send their finance and economic experts to Malaysia and learn the from our Finance Ministry in handling the state economy.

For your reference I’ll just copy and paste the news verbatim from themalaysianinsider.com.my

Malaysia won’t go into recession, says Nor Mohamed

BUTTERWORTH, Jan 10 — The economy will not plunge into a recession though it too feels the ripple effects of the global economic turmoil, Second Finance Minister Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop said today.

He said the country would be able to overcome the challenges as the government had taken immediate measures to channel the RM7 billion stimulus package.

“The Malaysian economy is still strong although many big countries are experiencing a recession and economic contraction, among them are the United States and European countries.

“Even Singapore’s economy has also contracted two per cent,” he told reporters after opening a food processing zone in Teluk Air Tawar here.

He said the Malaysian economic stability was also supported by the high banking liquidity and private sector confidence.

Nor Mohamed said the government started to disburse the RM7 billion package to all ministries several days ago to get projects which could be implemented immediately off the ground.

“We want all the allocations to be used this year with the focus on instant projects such as bridge repairs and construction, the restoration of buildings and to resurface roads in bad shape.

“We do not want the money to be used for big projects which will take too long to be completed and slow down the market cycle,” he said.

He said if private sector confidence trended downward, the government would inject more funds into the market.

Two crucial elements to be attended to in tackling the effects of the economic turmoil were the credit level and job opportunities, he said.

“We will make sure banks give out loans to eligible applicants and any banks which turn down loan applications for good projects will be made to explain,” Nor Mohamed said. — Bernama

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Recently Citigroup announced to layoffs about 53,000 of its staffs based in London and New York. This figure does not include the 22,000 layoffs announced earlier this year. Massive layoffs is part of the banking giant struggles to deal with massive losses from deteriorating debt.

Meanwhile back in Malaysia a few companies has started retrenching its workers. Starting with Nikko Electronics in Penang which retrenched 1,000 of its workers in June this year followed by Stats Chippac retrenching 150 workers and the latest is Infineon which retrenched 150 workers.

The trend for manufacturing companies to retrench its workers will be worst in 2009 due to the declining demand from manufacturing sectors as recession hits the globe particularly US, Europe and Japan.

Malaysians working abroad especially in Singapore will be most affected if recession hits Singapore. Currently more than 300,000 Malaysians are working in Singapore. Their retrenchment will further increase the number of unemployed citizens. With the current figures of 50,000 unemployment among our local graduates the situation will be worst than what we can imagine.

Although some quaters in the government including the DPM himself has assured that our economy is in a better position to face the economic downturn, the real impact is yet to come. Analysts predict that when recession hit our shores the effect will be double or triple fold.

When the last recession hit us, 80,000 f our citizens were made jobless. This time the effect will be worst but it can only be seen sometime next year. Since our economy and trades are interwined with other countries which are already facing the recession, sooner or later we all have to face the brunts that will affect our daily lifes.

It’shigh time for our MPs from both the ruling party and the opposition to sit together and come out real fast with concrete action plans to mitigate the impact of this downturn or else we the rakyat will suffer the most.