KUALA LUMPUR: The various economic reform programmes undertaken by the government have helped to narrow Malaysia’s gross national income per capita gap with the standard of the World Bank threshold to 15 per cent last year from 33 per cent in 2009.
Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) chief executive officer Datuk Seri Idris Jala said this was testament that the government’s efforts in the last six years to lift the nation to high-income status were beginning to bear fruit.
“We are seeing the results today,” he told reporters after witnessing a memorandum of understanding signing between KLSMC Stem Cells Sdn Bhd and the US’ Stanford University.
KLSMC Stem Cells is a subsidiary of Kuala Lumpur Sports Medicine Centre (KLSMC), a private medical centre focusing on sports-related injuries.
Idris said Malaysia is also on track to become a high-income advanced economy and that 2020 is the ideal year for the country to achieve that status even though the country has the capability to achieve it earlier.
He added that any effort to push the country to achieve the status before 2020 would put pressure on the government’s already tight budget and could result in the government borrowing more money for development expenditure, thus affecting the government’s fiscal condition.
The MoU between KLSMC Stem Cells and Stanford University is part of KLSMC’s efforts to obtain US Food and Drug Administration (US-FDA) certification for stem cell technology used for regeneration of articular cartilage.
Under the partnership, KLSMC Stem Cells aims to make Stanford University one of its clinical sites in the US.
KLSMC Stem Cells will also work closely with the university to secure international research grants to fast track development of the technology and provide novel solutions for other musculoskeletal injuries. — Bernama