Japan is suffering from lost decades because the country refuses to confront the long list of structural problems facing the country head on, preferring to kick the can down the road, hoping the problems will magically go away with quick fixes. Alas, as the said problems are not fixed at the source, they come back to haunt the country years later and with added complexities, making them harder to deal with. 

Malaysia is facing similar problems. Recently, the deputy governor of Bank Negara Malaysia Datuk Marzunisham Omar said that controlling inflation alone is insufficient to alleviate cost-of-living pressures in the country. Malaysia’s consumer price index cumulatively rose by 9.8% from 1Q 2020 to 1Q 2025. However, nominal private sector wages per worker increased by only 7.9% over the same period. So, in real terms, wages per worker declined by 1.9%; thus, the pressure from rising cost of living. Slow wage growth has not been able to keep pace with rising prices. This in turn is due to insufficient high paying jobs caused by a shortage of skilled workers. Malaysia’s failure to tackle the skill mismatch problem earlier on has led to the current rising cost of living pressure. Alas, no one talks about Malaysia’s poor productivity, efficiency and competitiveness, let alone deal with these decades-old problems. An obsession with headline GDP number instead of quality economic development is another way of viewing Malaysia’s structural problems.