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Budget 2026 puts the challenge of Malaysia’s productivity growth front and centre, with a focus on raising productivity through innovation, digital transformation, and workforce upskilling. But productivity ultimately depends on people: the skills, capabilities, and opportunities that shape the workforce of the future. So is Malaysia building the right kind of human capital that can raise productivity and competitiveness? On this episode of #ConsiderThis Melisa Idris speaks with Ibrahim Sani, CEO of Yayasan Peneraju, which is an agency under the Economy Ministry tasked to grow Bumiputera talent.
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00:00Hello and good evening. I'm Melissa Idris. Welcome to Consider This. This is the show where we want
00:23you to consider and then reconsider what you know of the news of the day. Budget 2026 puts the
00:30challenge of Malaysia's productivity growth front and centre with a focus on raising productivity
00:35through innovation, digital transformation and workforce upskilling. But productivity
00:42ultimately depends on people, the skills, the capability, the opportunities that shape the
00:48workforce of the future. So is Malaysia building the right kind of human capital? Not just producing
00:55more graduates but also developing the talent that can truly raise productivity and competitiveness.
01:00Well joining me to discuss this further is Ibrahim Sani, CEO of Yayasan Peneraju which is an agency
01:07under the Economy Ministry tasked to grow Bumi Putra talent. Ibrahim, thank you so much for joining me
01:14on the show today. So let's talk about Budget 2026 because under what was tabled we had 6 billion
01:23ringgit allocated to Yayasan Peneraju and MARA and UITM to strengthen Bumi Putra Education Development
01:30initiatives. So talk to me a little bit about that. Where is that money going to go? This actually goes
01:37back two years ago when we did the Putra 35 blueprint regarding the transformation of the Bumi Putra
01:45economy and within it the component where we talk about the talent development and human capital
01:51development is specifically tasked at trying to grow what we call value creators and not just value
01:59contributors to the economy. And how we define value contributors is that they actually can be economic
02:05multipliers. They can actually present some sort of value towards their communities that they are
02:11working with or building and living with i.e. through say for instance social enterprise or through
02:17their community and NGO work or another way of being a value creator is being a professional certificate
02:24holders say for instance a charter accountant or charter financial analyst and so on and then they
02:28too become to leave the employment and become capital owners themselves and start their own firms. So this
02:34is what i was thinking what was done behind the scenes when we were developing Putra 35 and then when
02:41we saw Putra 35 being announced earlier late last year and executed earlier this year then we did what
02:48we call the remapping of the agency that is being executing this kind of work or the agencies that will
02:54execute the kind of work that is contained within the blueprint. There we saw a few overlaps say for
03:01instance for TVET there's a few overlaps in terms of agencies that is going to execute the programs for
03:06TVET and then when we talk about the programs for upskilling and enhancing next generation technology
03:14training and certifications like AI training data analyst and cyber security not many agencies are doing
03:22that. So following this exercise where we were remapping who does what it's clear after about the first or
03:28second quarter of this year that say for instance Mara would do a lot of TVET and a lot of upskilling
03:34for that particular sector. UITM will focus on bachelors and postgraduate degrees and on research and then for
03:42Yaslan Paraju we would have a clear mandate on two areas which is on professional certifications such as
03:49accounting as well as CFA and another area on technology such as semiconductor AI training and the such. So this is
03:58where the money is going to go to and who is going to execute the kind of training that is coming in
04:02from the budget say for instance 6 billion ringgit as pronounced by the Prime Minister. Okay well so let's
04:07focus on your Yaslan Paraju's mandate. So you talked about more professional accreditation right accounting and
04:14tech. These are high skilled sectors. When you think about what to prioritize in terms of readying a future
04:24workforce. How do you tailor it to those specific areas? How do you make sure that Yaya Saban Raju is actually
04:34responsive? Because as we know industry's needs evolve far more quickly than maybe government can respond to.
04:45That's right. So you hit the nail on the head on that one Mel because while we are trying to build a
04:52long-term lifelong program for society and for the community industry needs are actually quite fast when
04:59it comes to trying to see what they need from the workforce and then if you want to become an
05:03entrepreneur or a business owner yourself you too need that kind of speediness and nimble-ness in terms of
05:09trying to get the right talent to execute your own businesses. So from this we have to think about
05:14it in two separate ways because the discussions are actually quite unique in each separate unit.
05:18For professionals it's actually quite clear cut. We just need to look at the professional
05:24certifications per capita vis-a-vis Malaysia against all the other countries. Say for instance in Malaysia we
05:31have 1,300 CFA charter holders against a backdrop of 35 million people. For Singapore they have 25,000
05:42CFA charter holders against a population of about 5 or 6 million. Hong Kong it's even greater they have
05:50about 50,000 CFA charter holders against population of about 6 million. So you know you can take out your
05:58calculator and divide what I'm trying to say is if we want to be competitive in the space of service
06:04industry specifically in the financial service industry clearly we are nowhere near the talent
06:10capacity of that of Hong Kong and Singapore. Now that is just for the CFA space. The same thing can be said
06:16about accounting where this year we are still trying our best to grow our number to the set target of 60,000
06:24chartered accountants or registered members with the Malaysian city of accountants but we're still
06:29struggling in the sense of 38,000 39,000 range for the past few years now. So in that space I mean I can
06:36go on you know with the PMP with certified internal auditor I mean the list goes on whatever it is all the
06:45other developing countries have a far higher greater rate of people holding a professional status vis-a-vis their
06:52own population resulting in per capita charterholder status for various industries within the professional
06:58systems is greater than Malaysia. So until and unless we hit that we can't even imagine or or put ourselves
07:05in the same league as them because we're not okay that's number one. Right so if I just could interrupt
07:10you very quickly what what are the barriers that allow for this discrepancy or what barriers persist for
07:19particularly young Malays from uh from growing professionally in this way? Okay then we slice and
07:26dice the number of uh uh we call it four clusters lah Malay, Chinese, Indian, others unfortunately it is
07:33what it is we have to live with the system that we work with uh for Chinese per capita they are matching
07:39that of Hong Kong and Singapore so I see the some cultural uh similarities there and you know that there would be
07:46a lot of stories or or heritage in terms of why they feel that having such a certification is actually
07:51quite important for them to mobilize the economic uh what to call this uh station in life right for
07:58Indians others and Malays is still far behind so if you slice and dice it even further we are so far behind
08:04when it comes to trying to achieve those numbers however the to answer your question more directly what is
08:09hindering us it's actually nothing it's just time we need time and consistent deliberate push every year to
08:16continue to grow the numbers because we started off with zero accountants of Malays in 1960 so we had uh
08:25Tuan Hanif Ashad and uh uh uh Asha Ayob and all these uh you know luminaries uh they were the first
08:32accountants um they only started in the 1960s and Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh and and and Penang they all had
08:42accountants mostly from mainland China when they came over so what i'm trying to say is nothing is
08:47stopping us we just need to not lose focus in terms of building our capacity now the turning point is
08:52actually next year 2026 where it was presented in the budget and in the notes it was mentioned also by
08:57the PMX that 2026 for the first time in our history will see newly enrolled accountants from
09:05bumiputra to supersede non-bumiputra for the first time there is no history you know so what does that
09:12mean now it's twin it took us what 60 70 years to make the threshold overlap now against a denominator of
09:2130 percent non-bumi versus a 70 percent bumi even with the with a lot of bumiputra citizens about 70
09:29percent of us are bumiputras it took us all these years to cross that that that uh number of new
09:36enrollment of uh members to mia so it we're off to a good start we just need more time and deliberate push
09:43and this is why yes i'm Raju specifically for the professional space is definitely not losing focus and
09:49trying to grow our numbers even more aggressively that's why under the uh leadership of uh you know
09:54datuk sri hamid amzah under the uh muf slash uh kementeran economy or minister of economy uh he is
10:01continuing the push that was set by the previous minister to actually grow the number of professional
10:07chartered status of bumiputras uh at an aggressive rate and that is why with this finding we have a clear
10:13focus and we have a clear determination to execute that that is for the professional right so so that um you
10:18also mentioned the tech sector so you want to grow the tech skills talk to me a little bit about that
10:24so you have two spaces here one we call branded another one is unbranded branded is you know microsoft
10:31copilot google gemini aws cloud computing uh itil those are brands that the industry recognizes and the
10:41industry appreciates and the industry already has a standardization in terms of the kind of quality that
10:48you have if you have that kind of certifications and the kind of difficulty or the kind of advanced or
10:53amateurship the level that a particular certification carries that in itself bumiputras are not enough
11:01not enough okay another one is what we call unbranded certifications and this is no no amount of
11:08certification has been created to assist the trainings for these kind of uh skill set that is required for
11:17next generation uh technology such as from engineering agentic ai um cloud ai these kind of trainings are
11:28still in iteration even with the branded uh team like microsoft and google and all that they're still
11:34working it out even for open ai they're still working it out deep seek from china is still working
11:39it out however we need today over 60 000 uh advanced level prompt engineers we have roughly about
11:491 000 so we are 59 000 behind any this is the the level of uh uh uh highest proficiency the lowest
11:56amount of proficiency based on the data coming from talent cop as well as the national ai office
12:01we need about half a million people to be what we call ai aware all right we don't have that number
12:07we have about 50 000 200 000 rough estimates so we need to grow or cross over people who are from
12:13ai unaware to ai aware at 400 000 uh packs as soon as possible i mean no no set no date has been
12:22set but this is the criticality of the situation right now now how can you i teach you you know
12:28prom engineer all that even if you're from if when you're not even from ai unaware to ai aware hence the
12:34creation of the ai training blueprint um that was endorsed by met4ir by the prime minister himself
12:42uh and was presented to both ministers of the human resources as well as the ministry of digital and
12:49they have endorsed it in terms of what the blueprint looks like and now it is at the agency penjelara so
12:54the execution executing agency which is me yes i'm praju to go and execute the training not just
13:00certification but the training specifically for ai uh to grow that number uh at least or to to to bring
13:07that gap even smaller i may not be able to get you know uh 400 000 people to be ai unaware to ai aware
13:14in just a year but even if i get 10 of that and that's good enough is that is that your kpi i'm just
13:19wondering because again beyond the numbers right how do you ensure that actually you're measuring quality
13:27you these skills that are being developed actually translate into productivity gains for the
13:32workplace for the country so so you think about it uh in the 1960s and 1970s the malaysian government took
13:39a bet by using jpa and sending our our parents uh to international universities with the hope that they
13:48return number one and with the hope that they get good jobs and with the hope that they can boost the economy
13:54now there was no set kpi when they send say for instance my uh mother or your you know my my my
14:00father-in-law uh to university of strathclyde university of adelaide there was never a clear
14:05instruction or a clear demand that they come back and reach these kind of numbers but the the punt was
14:11that they when they come back they bring skill sets from a graduate from strathclyde from oxford from harvard
14:17from adelaide from queensland and so on and they did and over the next 30 to 40 years we saw a cater
14:24of proficient inspirational uh bumi putra managers uh and and chief secretaries and the like to actually
14:35lead the professional space of the workforce today at m40 or even at the t20 many of those that belong in
14:44those categories came from that tradition of jpa scholarships uh when malaysia was making a bit
14:50bad on that now the same philosophy is being applied right now beyond looking at numbers what we are
14:56hoping is that when we have x amount of people per capita that has a cta certification for instance
15:03or x number of people that has a advanced from engineering ai certification they would be economic
15:10changes and economic multiplies satisfying the definition of what we were talking about earlier
15:15on in this interview to make themselves value creators unfortunately with human development
15:21capital training this is the bet that we have to take a belief in our people to go for the training
15:27and invest in them right right brian thank you so much for being on the show with me today
15:32thank you we're going to take a quick break here and consider this we'll be back with more stay tuned
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