Thursday, 4 December 2014

In Defense of Zeti

Kamal Salih MHDR 2013 Zeti
It must have been some miscommunication with her staff that led Tan Sri Zeti Aziz, the Bank Negara Governor, to make that remark last week about bank accounts reflecting Malaysian household savings.  When we set out the clarification on how we treated and measured households' precautionary savings and differentiated them from investments in the Malaysian Human Development Report 2013, readers' response to her were what I thought, on reading through them, somewhat misplaced.
Kamal Salih MHDR 2013 Zeti
I thought the remarks did an injustice to the measure of her qualifications and quality;  she has after all won widespread respect, including mine, and awarded many accolades for her performance as a central banker.  She is highly trained as a monetary economist out of the renowned Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the same graduate school I went to, only she was three years behind me.  Zeti is a gentle soul like her late mother, and possesses a calm and determined personality that masks her high degree of professionalism.  I would love to have her on my team anytime.  And I so admire her father, Royal Professor Ungku Aziz, here photographed last month by Dr. Muhammed Khalid when the latter presented Pak Ungku at his house with a personal copy of his book, The Colour of Inequality.  So, what then is a small slip to spoil such a reputation and pedigree?

Kamal Salih, 4th  December 2014. Kamal Salih MHDR 2013 Zeti

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