Past Events
26Sep2018

Challenges Facing Malaysia’s New Government

Penang Institute is proud to host a public lecture entitled “Challenges Facing Malaysia’s New Government?” by Jayant Menon which is scheduled as follows:

Date: 26 September 2018 (Wednesday)
Time: 8.00pm – 9.30pm (Registration starts at 7.30pm)
Venue: Conference Hall 1, Penang Institute, No. 10 Jalan Brown, George Town, Penang

The Talk
The change in government in Malaysia was not only unexpected, it was amazing. In this talk, Jayant Menon will examine some of the key challenges facing the new government. These include: the difficulties of governing as a loosely-bound coalition; dealing with the GLC ‘monsters, as well as the elephant in the room: the affirmative action programme. These challenges present themselves in the context of rising youth unemployment, dwindling private investment, rising cost of living and declining living standards, high levels of inequality, premature deindustrialization, and weakened governance and institutions. What are some of the key reforms required, and how should they be implemented? And what kind of change can we really expect? Or, how will heightened expectations playoff against the many constraints (history, plurality etc.) impeding change?

The Speaker
Jayant Menon, Ph.D is Lead Economist in the Office of the Chief Economist at the Asian Development Bank in Manila, Philippines, where he works on trade, international investment and development issues. He joined ADB in 1999 and has worked on the India Desk, the Regional Economic Monitoring Unit, the Southeast Asia Department, and the Office for Regional Economic Integration. He also had a stint at the ADB Institute in Tokyo between 2005-2008. One of his key accomplishments at ADB was to develop the Trade stream, and assemble a team, which he later headed. Prior to joining ADB, he worked as an academic in Australia for more than a decade, mainly at the Centre of Policy Studies at Monash University in Melbourne. He has also worked at the University of Melbourne, Victoria University, and the American University in Washington, DC.

Dr. Menon holds adjunct appointments with the Australian National University, University of Nottingham, UK and Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, and has served on the Advisory Boards of the University of Nottingham Campus in Malaysia and the Cambodia Development Resource Institute. He was an editor of the Journal of Southeast Asian Economies and serves on the editorial board of several academic journals. Dr. Menon delivered the 2014 Boustead Annual Globalization Lecture at the University of Nottingham, Malaysia. He has authored or co-authored more than one hundred academic publications, mostly on trade and development, and particularly as they relate to Asia.

Kindly register your interest here. Please feel free to circulate this invitation to your family and friends. For further enquiries, please contact the secretariat at enquiry@penanginstitute.org.

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