With a historically large oil and gas sector, Malaysia has had to contain damage from the 50% drop in the global oil price that started in 2014. But senator Wahid Omar, Malaysia's minister of financial affairs, is keen to highlight how the shift in oil prices has in fact been beneficial to key policy reforms, and how Malaysia is successfully diversifying its economy and government revenue sources as part of its economic transformation programme (ETP), which launched in 2010.
Mr Omar expects drops in oil prices to slow down Malaysia's gross domestic product growth, with expectations for 2015 revised downwards from 5.6% to between 4.5% and 5%. But Malaysia’s efforts to diversify its economy away from oil and gas are a reality. “We have always wanted to reduce our dependency on revenues from oil and gas activities. There was a time when more than 40% of our government revenue was coming from this sector. We brought this down to 31% in 2013, and to below 30% in 2014,” says Mr Omar.
