KUALA LUMPUR (July 26): The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MEA) shared that the 12th Malaysia Plan (12MP), covering the period from 2020 to 2025, will be premised on the shared prosperity initiative.

Speaking at an economic symposium organised by the Parliament today, MEA deputy secretary-general (macro) Zakiah Jaafar said the 12MP would cover three development dimensions — economic empowerment, environmental sustainability and social re-engineering.

"Economic empowerment entails the growth drivers and enablers, ecosystem and imperatives, while environmental sustainability, for the first time ever, we are going to put equal weight on environment with economic dimension.

"What happen in Pasir Gudang and Sungai Kim Kim is unacceptable," she said.

Chemicals from factories polluted Sungai Kim Kim in the industrial district of Pasir Gudang, sickening around 1,000 people, including students at nearby schools, since March.

Thirty-four of these students are now part of 171 plaintiffs suing the Johor government, its Menteri Besar Datuk Osman Sapian and 10 others for RM30 million in damages.

Under social re-engineering dimension, Zakiah said the government aims to enhance social capital, inclusivity and social cohesion.

"Surrounding the whole dimension are the new governance and policy tools that we are going to explore, one of it is behavioural economics, this is combining economics and psychology to ensure that our policies will be efficient and generate the outcome that we targeted," she explained.

Zakiah said the government will collect feedback from stakeholders through 13 inter-agency planning groups in the federal and state governments.

Meanwhile, 46 technical working groups involving the public and private sectors were established as platforms to gather feedback, she said.

Additionally, 180 focus groups were established to obtain feedback not only from the public and private sectors, but also civil society.

The feedback from these focus groups will be used to prepare 32 strategy papers in support of the 12MP document, which is expected to be tabled to Parliament in the third quarter of 2020.