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BY
PROF. EMERITUS DATO' DR. ZAKRI ABDUL HAMID
Science Advisor to the Prime Minister of Malaysia / Joint Chairman – Government, MIGHT
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Experience has shown that ountries that grow rich
are not necessarily those well-endowed with natural
resources but those that invest wisely in building their
human capital and allocating a reasonable percentage
of their gross domestic product to research and
development.
As we celebrate our 53rd Merdeka, it
is also appropriate to reflect on what
role science can play in building our
national prosperity.
There used to be a time when science flourished
in this country and contributed to wealth creation,
although it was misdirected and catered to a different
stakeholder. During the colonial era, several research
institutions were established to enrich the British
empire or to take care of the well-being of our then
political masters.
The Institute of Medical Research was established
in 1901 to address the hazards posed by tropical
diseases prevailing at that time, malaria being one
of them.
To meet the needs of an increasing population due
partly to an influx of immigrant labourers, and to
fill the coffers of the colonial government through
export of agricultural produce, the Department of
Agriculture was founded in 1905. To help exploit
our abundant and pristine biological diversity at that
time, especially the extraction of timber, the Forest
Research Institute of Malaya was launched in 1926.
In one of the earliest episodes of bio-piracy, in 1876,
Henry Wickham, an Englishman, smuggled 70,000
rubber seeds out of Brazil to be germinated at Kew
Gardens near London, a despicable act but still
deserving of a knighthood from Queen Victoria.
Some of the seedlings were despatched to the Far
East for large-scale planting.
To support the fledgling rubber industry, the Rubber
Research Institute of Malaya (RRIM) was founded
in 1926. The then Malaya and later Malaysia was
the top rubber producing country in the world for
many years, because of the excellent research and
development conducted at RRIM. Rubber
remained a top revenue earner for the country in the
early years after Merdeka.
Oil palm, originally from West Africa, was first
introduced to Malaya in 1910 by Scotsman
William Sime and English banker Henry Darby.
The first plantations were established by colonial
owners such as Sime Darby. These companies were
“Malaysianised” in the 1970s.
Science had a hand in creating wealth through
oil palm cultivation. Research, which was earlier
conducted by the plantation houses, received a boost
with the establishment of the Palm Oil Research
Institute of Malaysia (PORIM) in 1979.
PORIM (renamed Malaysian Palm Oil Board in
2000) is a public-private-coordinated institution
with an impressive rate of technology
commercialisation at 30.6 per cent (compared with
3.4 per cent among local universities).
Time and circumstances have changed. Agro-based economic activities no longer constitute the bulk of our national prosperity. The export-oriented electrical and electronics industries located in the free trade zones brought a lot of revenue in the 1970s and 1980s but may not be tenable much longer, given the increasing competition from our cheaper-cost neighbours. | 
| Petroleum is a major source of income but this source of wealth is finite. 
It is time to venture into other wealth-creating
pursuits. The dawn of the 21st century has brought
with it advances in information and communication
technology and emerging technologies such as
biotechnology, nanotechnology and the green
technologies. However, these are all knowledge-intensive
activities.
We need to prepare and equip our people well.
Experience has shown that countries that grow
rich are not necessarily those well-endowed
with natural resources but those that invest
wisely in building their human capital and
allocating a reasonable percentage of their gross
domestic product to research and development.
Indeed, a 2007 World Bank Report suggested
that “Malaysia needs an economy where science,
technology and engineering are integrated into
the production process and where creativity,
imagination, knowledge and design capability are
embodied in well-educated skilled workers who are
the main source of national prosperity and wealth”.
Vision 2020 and the New Economic Model cannot
be premised on low-cost, low-tech mass production
but need to be driven by cutting-edge technologies
underpinned by a strong R&D and innovation
base.
We have embarked on that road. However, it has
been a halting start. Notwithstanding that our
policymakers are aware of the potential of science,
technology and innovation in wealth creation, and
national targets have been well set, these targets are
somewhat off the mark for the moment.
There is an urgent need for a revamp of our science
governance and research priority-setting. For
example, although R&D spending of 1.5 per cent of
gross domestic product was targeted in the Ninth
Malaysia Plan, the gross expenditure on R&D
in 2008 was a low 0.21 per cent, a dismal figure
compared with the R&D spending of countries like
Japan (3.32 per cent), South Korea (3.22 per cent)
and Singapore (2.77 per cent).
Our efforts to increase the number of researchers to
50 per 10,000 workers were also not realised: the
current figure stands at 20.3 per 10,000, compared
with South Korea’s 89.8 and Singapore’s 103.
It is timely, therefore, as recently announced in the
10th Malaysia Plan, that the government intends
to establish the National Science and Research
Council, an apex body mandated to provide advice,
set priorities and streamline R&D activities.
This is a strong signal to researchers in the public
sector and partners in the corporate world that the
government recognises the crucial role that science
in general and R&D, in particular, play in building a
prosperous and peaceful nation.
Let us work together to reignite the fire for a science
renaissance in this country.
| This article was published in The News Straits
Times, 3 September 2010. |
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