Keynote Lecture: Economic Growth in Middle Income Countries: How Can Countries Escape the Middle-Income Trap?

Indermit Gill is Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics.

Before starting this position on September 1, 2022, Gill served as the World Bank’s Vice President for Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions, where he helped shape the Bank’s response to the extraordinary series of shocks that have hit developing economies since 2020. Between 2016 and 2021, he was a professor of public policy at Duke University and non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Global Economy and Development program.

Gill led the World Bank's influential 2009 World Development Report on economic geography. His work includes introducing the concept of the “middle-income trap” to describe how countries stagnate after reaching a certain level of income. He has published extensively on key policy issues facing developing countries—among other things, sovereign debt vulnerabilities, green growth and natural-resource wealth, labor markets, and poverty and inequality.

Gill has also taught at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.

Liew Chin Tong is the Deputy Minister of International Trade and Industry. He is currently the Member of Parliament for Iskandar Puteri and the State Assemblyperson for Perling, Johor.
 

He was a Senator in Dewan Negara and served as Deputy Defence Minister from July 2018 to February 2020. He supported Minister Mohammad Sabu's effort to present Malaysia's first ever Defence White Paper which was passed in Parliament on 2 December 2019.

He was first elected Member of Parliament for Bukit Bendera (2008-2013) and was subsequently the Member of Parliament for Kluang (2013-2018).

Since 1999, Chin Tong has served DAP in various capacities and is now a member of its Central Executive Committee, serving as the Deputy Secretary-General. He is also the Chairman of Johor DAP./

Chin Tong graduated with a degree in Political Science and an honours degree in Asian Studies from the Australian National University, and holds an International Masters in Regional Integration from the Asia-Europe Institute, University of Malaya.

Chin Tong is the Chairman of Research for Social Advancement (REFSA) since 2012 and was the Executive Director of Penang Institute (previously Socio-Economic and Environmental Research Institute, SERI, from 2009-2012). He was also formerly a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore.

He is passionate about policies relating to the economy, defence and security, institutional reform, political Islam, security and international relations, and urban studies.

Nurul Izzah Anwar was formerly Member of Parliament for Permatang Pauh, serving her third term in the Malaysian legislature up to the year 2022.

Her long political career began with the creation of the People’s Justice Party (KEADILAN) in 1999 where she played a vital role in its establishment. To this day, she remains a member of KEADILAN after serving as the political party’s Vice President from 2010-2018. She is currently serving her fourth stint as Vice President after her reappointment in 2022. Prior to being an MP, Nurul Izzah was known as a strong proponent of political and civil rights with a special interest in prisoners of conscience, bent on pursuing a holistic reform agenda to expand Malaysia’s democratic space.

Her current work on the ground revolves around projects that empower the most vulnerable segments of her constituency. Some of her initiatives as MP for Permatang Pauh include Program ROSE in collaboration with Universiti Malaya (a cervical cancer screening program for underserved women based at the University of Malaya Medical Centre), the Permatang Pauh Women’s Project (upskilling B40 women), and the 2021 Permatang Pauh Multidimensional Poverty Study headed by Professor Fatimah Kari, a forerunning expert in Malaysian multidimensional poverty.

She also recently launched 'Talian Prihatin', a telephone service providing free mental health support catered to her constituents. Run by trained volunteers, the hotline offers private individual counselling, while also operating as a port of call for victims of domestic violence. Her initiatives and programs are often the result of active collaborations with a range of NGOs, academic institutions, and other local entities to ensure that these programs remain sustainable within the local ecosystem in the long run.

Dato’ Sri Idris Jala is a world-renowned transformation guru in driving performance for both Governments and the private sector through his Big-Fast-Results Methodology.

He is currently the Chairman of PEMANDU Associates, a multi-disciplinary consultancy based in Kuala Lumpur that specializes in public sector transformation, business turnaround, and strategic communications.

In 2014, Bloomberg placed him amongst the top-10 most influential policy makers in the world. Under his leadership, PEMANDU was also named as the top-20 most innovative Government agencies globally by Bloomberg Philanthropies and NESTA UK.

Dato’ Sri Idris Jala served as a Cabinet Minister under the Prime Minister’s Department between 2010 and 2017, taking helm of Malaysia’s National Transformation Programme (NTP), a roadmap designed to spearhead the nation’s transition towards high income status by 2020. Prior to PEMANDU, Dato’ Sri Idris was the CEO of Malaysia Airlines, and also held various senior positions in the Shell Group for 23 years.

On top of his role in Pemandu, he currently serves as the non-executive co-Chairman of Sunway Group, the Chairman of Heineken Malaysia, and the pro-Chancellor of Sunway University.

Dato’ Sri Idris also lectures annually at Harvard University under the Harvard Ministerial Programme, continuously sharing his secrets for effective transformation to Ministers and CEOs worldwide today.

Apurva Sanghi is the World Bank Lead Economist for Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur.

He was previously based in Moscow and Nairobi holding similar roles for the Russian Federation, and the four East African countries of Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Eritrea. Prior, Apurva led the World Bank’s Global Economic Growth Cluster.

A macro-economist with environmental expertise, Apurva is also a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has worked on development topics ranging from infrastructure & climate change to microfinance & agriculture. Prior to joining the World Bank, Apurva worked in the private sector (United States); Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI). He has held teaching and research positions at MGIMO (Russia), Thammasat University (Bangkok), University of Chicago, and Yale.

Apurva is a selective commentator with views expressed in the pages of major international media outlets such as the Financial Times; the Economist; Al Jazeera, New York Times, Project Syndicate; and popular blog sites such as the World Bank’s and Brookings. He was recognized by Forbes Magazine as a “leader and disruptor” trying to fix broken GDP. He has also given a TEDx talk, broadcast live from the Kakuma refugee camp in Northern Kenya.

Apurva holds college degrees in physics & economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He earned his PhD in economics from the University of Chicago and wrote his dissertation on the economics of climate change.

Wong Shou Ning is a presenter and producer with The Morning Run on BFM89.9.

Her past interviews have ranged from global CEOs to politicians and even up and coming Malaysian corporates. She delights in breaking the news and being the first to spot market trends that no news outlet has covered.

With decades of fund management experience under her belt with roles at Prudential Unit Trust, UOB Asset Management and Hong Leong Assurance, Shou Ning brings life to what most would regard as just numbers and charts.

Dr. Ndiamé Diop, from Senegal, is the World Bank Country Director for Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand since July 2020. In this capacity, he leads the bank’s high-level strategic dialogue and the institution’s financial and technical/advisory programs in Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand.

Prior to his current role, Dr. Diop was for 4 years the head of the Bank’s Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment unit for East Asia and the Pacific, based in Jakarta and Bangkok. In this role, he oversaw the bank’s 30-plus country economists working in East Asia and Pacific region and provided advisory and technical support to high-level officials on key macro, fiscal, trade and growth-enhancing reforms mainly in Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, PNG and the Pacific Island countries.

Dr. Diop was also for 4 years the World Bank Lead Economist for Indonesia. In this role, he led the overall economic policy dialogue, advisory and development policy lending work in Indonesia. Prior to relocating to Jakarta in 2012, Dr. Diop held lead economist roles for Jordan and Lebanon, country economist roles in the Middle East and North Africa and was the Bank’s Resident Representative for Tunisia in 2007-2010. He joined the World Bank in Washington DC as a Young Professional in 2000.

As economist, Dr. Diop has published in peer reviewed Journals and books on fiscal policy and growth, monetary policy and inflation, macro policies and resilience to sudden stops in capital inflows, the impacts of trade liberalization in developing countries, natural resource abundance, Dutch disease, and diversification.

Yasuhiko Matsuda is the World Bank Country Manager for Malaysia.

Since joining the World Bank initially as a consultant in 1996 and then as a Young Professional in 1997, Mr. Matsuda has worked on a range of development issues especially, public sector governance, public financial management, service delivery in education, health, and social protection in Africa, Latin America & Caribbean, East Asia & Pacific, and South Asia.

Over his 25-year career at the World Bank, Mr. Matsuda has led a range of operational tasks in multiple countries in multiple regions, with emphasis on knowledge-based advisory services. In Nairobi (1997-98), he contributed to preparation of the World Bank’s Country Assistance Strategy for Kenya. As an expert on applied political economy analysis, he subsequently played a central role in developing the Bank’s official governance diagnostic, Institutional & Governance Reviews (IGR), with applications in Bolivia, Peru, Mexico and the Dominican Republic.

He led the World Bank’s fiscal and public management engagement in Brazil (2000-06) and governance engagement in the Philippines (2006-13), in both cases from the respective country offices in Brasilia (2002-06) and Manila (2006-09) as well as from the World Bank headquarters in Washington, DC. He then switched to human development to focus his work on service delivery issues and led the Bank’s social protection team in Nepal (2014-16) before taking up the role of Program Leader to coordinate the World Bank’s engagements on human development and goverannce in Afghanistan, based in Kabul (2017-20).

His most recent assignment was Lead Specialist, Human Capital Project, where he spearheaded development and piloting of outcome-oriented public expenditure and institutional reviews focused on select human capital issues. He holds a BA in political science from Waseda Univesity, Japan and a Ph. D in political science from the University of Pittsburgh, USA.