A fortnight ago, Minister in the Prime Minister Department Senator Abdul Wahid Omar was reported as saying the income gap between Bumiputera households and Chinese households is about 30%. (Source: http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/316531)
This statistics is problematic on many grounds.
Wrong statistics results in wrong economic policy
Firstly, the government used average income in its calculation. It is already well known, and I myself have previously highlighted how a set with wide distribution, such as household income will have extreme values or outliers which will skew the average.
For example, if we compare five Chinese households and five Bumiputera households, every one of the Chinese households may be poorer than each of the Malay households but if only one of the Chinese household is billionaire Berjaya Corp. Vincent Tan’s family, then the average household income of the Chinese households will be higher than the Bumiputera households.
Secondly, in every ethnic group, there will be high income and low income households. One of the characteristics of an income inequality measure is anonymity, where the metrics measured is not the identity of the subject, including their religion or race, but solely income distribution.
As such, the data provided by the government is not meaningful as its accuracy is highly questionable.
The problem arises when government then uses such misleading data to design economic policies.
Bumiputera economic predicament cannot be resolved due to inaccurate data
Another issue is how government data does not differentiate between Malays in West Malaysia with Bidayuh in Sarawak or Bajau in Sabah. All these are lumped together as “Bumiputera”. The problem with this is obvious. Take for example data on poverty; the poverty rate of Bumiputera as a whole is 5.3% (2009), while Malays in West Malaysia is 4.3%, Bidayuh 10.8% and Bajau 28.1%. (Source: http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/mhdr_2013.pdf)
Clearly it does not make sense to use the 5.3% poverty rate to represent every ethnic groups in the Bumiputera category. If government makes policy decisions based on such data, it is no wonder that the majority of indigenous groups in Sabah and Sarawak as well as Orang Asal in West Malaysia will be alienated as is currently happening.
Statistics Act is outdated
One of the main reasons for the above problem is the lack of efficiency and transparency in the existing statistical process. In the era of Open Government, our Statistics Act is outdated, created 50 years ago in 1965 and has not been amended since 26 years ago in 1989.
Among others, the Act is not able to deal with current requirements and trends especially to achieve the objective of competency, accountability and transparency.
For instance, Section 2(2) limits the function of the Statistics Department to collect statistics only for the purpose of government usage and several other specific usages.
Section 8 on the other hand gives absolute power to the Prime Minister to make rules such as to withhold information related to the Act as well as to set fees on request for statistics.
There are cases where statistics were stopped from distribution arbitrarily. For example, the data on export and import for Penang was not given after November 2014 with the excuse that the data was misinterpreted by the public. Another example of disappearing statistics is the full statistics on crimes, which is no longer published in the Royal Malaysian Police website as it used to.
Three suggestions to revamp the Statistics Act
Thus I would like to propose three measures to revamp the existing Statistics Act:
Firstly, because statistics is collected by the Statistis Department using public fund, the department’s mandate should be expanded to include collecting and interpreting statistics of public interest, not just merely for the interest of the government.
Secondly, on the same reason, that statistics is collected with public fund, the public should be able to access all statistical information easily and without cost. I have received complaints that some academics have to pay thousands of ringgit when they request for data from the Statistics Department. This should not happen.
Thirdly, the Statistics Department should publish all its data online, includin raw data, disaggregated data including for sub-regional data, methodology, interepretation and other related information. These should be published in formats which can be manipulated or converted to other forms for public and academic usages. This not only allows public access to important data but also allow researchers and decision makers including the opposition to have access to information which will enable them to make better analysis.