The need to gradually and safely reopen the economy is critical for the stimulus packages to work and this cannot happen if the economy remains substantially closed, says Tan Sri Abdul Wahid Omar, chairman of the Kuala Lumpur Economic Club’s advisory council.
He stated that the gradual reopening of the economy corresponded to an increase in vaccination rates.
As of September 8, approximately 16.4 million Malaysians had received two doses of vaccination. This accounted for 49.8 percent of Malaysia’s population of 32.7 million, or 70% of the total adult population.
“Malaysia has already reached ‘herd immunity’ level in Klang Valley end August 2021 and nationwide herd immunity is expected by end September 2021,” Wahid said at the “National Recovery Summit” yesterday.
Wahid said the government’s announcement of Klang Valley moving into Phase Two of the National Recovery Plan from today would allow more economic activities to gradually resume.
However, he said there was still another RM330 billion of the stimulus packages left to be utilised and RM185 billion of the balance 2021 Budget to be spent in the second half of 2021.
On Bursa Malaysia he said it had a great year in 2020 with double the average daily trading value (ADV) from RM1.9 billion to RM4.2 billion.
“FBM KLCI increased 2.4 per cent to 1,627 points, the second best performing market in the region,” he said, adding that business momentum continued into the first half of 2021 with ADV rising to RM4.4 billion.
However, the worsening Covid-19 cases and prolonged movement control orders, had impacted the FBM KLCI after declining 5.8 per cent to 1,533 points as at June 30.
“This made our market one of the least performing markets in the region for the first half of 2021,” he said.
