The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) has been in the news a lot lately.

Politicians, media practitioners and civil society have all commented extensively on it, both in favour of the deal and against.

Being an economics student and an active member of the United Kingdom & Eire Council of Malaysian Students (UKEC) - the debate has captured my opinion.

I am on the whole in favour of the deal - I’ve written to defend it before.

Still, it cannot be denied that the TPPA has come under fire over the past year, particularly from the BANTAH coalition of NGOs.

BANTAH claims that the TPPA represents a form of neo-colonialism.

They argue that the TPPA will result in—among other things—global firms displacing local firms.

This is something I strongly disagree with. Such a claim is not rooted in reality and ignores Malaysia’s illustrious history as a trading nation.

Indeed, examine Malaysia’s past and you’ll realize that opening our borders to compete with global players is nothing new for Malaysia. Malaysians have been doing this since the 15th century in Malacca.

Today, our trade to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio is 139%.

The second half of the 20th century saw players such as Motorola setting up bases in Malaysia and the 20th century ended with the erection of the Petronas Twin Towers, which was built with the help of Korean and Japanese experts.

Despite this, the local economy has thrived and SMEs - who are supposedly the most vulnerable - have seen their contribution to the national economy grow to 30% of the GDP.

But what good will the TPPA do to Malaysia?

I think the principle benefit will be that it will give Malaysia a much-needed economic jolt.

According to a recent study by the Peterson Institute of Economics, joining the TPPA will see Malaysia increase its gross national income and exports by RM26.3 billion and increase in exports of RM41.7 billion by 2025.

These are huge gains which should not be scoffed at, especially given the continuing weakness of the global economy.

The TPPA will also open access for Malaysian products to a 12-nation market with a combined population of 800 million people and a total GDP of USD27.5 trillion.

Joining the TPPA will also remove barriers that have prevented our exporters from offering goods and services which we have a comparative advantage – such as palm oil – to countries such as Canada and Peru, where import duties for palm oil are 11% and 9% respectively.

At the same time, the TPPA will bring much needed transparency, particularly in the case of government procurements.

One of the obligations of the government procurement chapter of the TPPA establishes stringent requirements for increased transparency and good governance.

Considering the TPP involves countries such as Australia and the United States, these transparency requirements will be undoubtedly high, subjecting local government procurements to international standards. This will be a good start given the talk of corruption and leakages that has plagued local projects.

So why, despite these clear benefits, has opposition to the TPPA been so fierce.

While I feel the Ministry in charge of the negotiations – the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) – has done well in conducting numerous engagement sessions with key stakeholders, they haven’t reached out enough to the general public.

This has left an obvious void, which has been filled by groups like BANTAH.

Thus, I was pleased to find out that MITI, led by its Minister Dato’ Sri Mustapa Mohamed, decided to organize a consultation session with young Malaysians on the TPPA earlier this month.

300 Malaysian youths representing various groups, including the United Kingdom & Eire Council of Malaysian Students (UKEC), Perdana Fellows and Kelab UMNO Luar Negara attended the event.

We were all pleased and grateful that MITI had taken the time and effort to hold an engagement session of this scale for us.

It was especially refreshing to see someone of Dato’ Sri Mustapa’s seniority reaching out to young Malaysians.

Overall, I thought that this engagement session was great. Several of the audience members agreed and hoped that more such events could be held in the future.

This was certainly a good start and it is something that needs to be built on, especially when trying to communicate the policy rationale behind deals such as the TPPA.

Clearly, Dato’ Sri Mustapa has set a new standard for those in government.

Given the ever-increasing importance of consensus-building with the rise of social media and more open public discourse, we need more of the same, particularly in tackling serious issues such as the TPPA.

It is crucial to reach out to the public, especially young people.

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*Low Jin Wu is a second-year undergraduate reading Economics at the University of Manchester.
*He
is currently the Director of Strategies of the United Kingdom and Eire Council of Malaysian Students.
*The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of Astro AWANI.