Bantah-TPPA: Trade pact will not ease high cost of living

[Anas Alam Faizli]

KUALA LUMPUR: The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) will not benefit the people as it will not help alleviate the high cost of living, said Bantah-TPPA deputy chairman Azlan Awang.

Speaking to FMT, Azlan said that the people’s biggest problem now, according to PricewaterhouseCooper’s Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA), was the high cost of living and low salaries.

“The CBA estimates only a 0.9 per cent increase of wages on top of the baseline wage growth but this is not enough,” he said after a press conference on the TPPA.

“Under the 11th Malaysia Plan, the government has targeted a wage to GDP ratio of 40 per cent from the current 34 per cent”.

He explained that in most developed countries the wage share of the economy was in the order of 50 per cent to 60 per cent.

“In our case, post-TPPA even the 40 per cent target may not be achieved.”

To achieve this, Azlan said a wage growth of about 8 per cent at the very least, was needed.

He added that a majority of households depended solely on wages as a source of their household income.

Azlan also cautioned that the TPPA could lead to loss of jobs as the CBA indicated a narrowing trade surplus caused by higher imports and this normally translated into less jobs or even job losses.

The TPPA negotiations, which were first launched in 2005, involves 12 countries – Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, US and Vietnam.