During his first tenure as finance minister, Malaysia went from recording a -1.03% GDP growth in 1985 to 9.06% in 1989.
KUALA LUMPUR: The passing of Daim Zainuddin, Malaysia’s sixth finance minister, is a loss for the country’s business community, particularly the banking and real estate sectors.
Born on April 29, 1938, in Alor Setar, Kedah, Daim was the youngest of 13 children. He received his early education at the Seberang Perak Malay School in Alor Setar before attending the Sultan Abdul Hamid College, an English-medium school.
He finished his upper secondary education at St Xavier’s Institution, George Town, Penang. After that, Daim furthered his studies as a barrister-at-law at Lincoln’s Inn in the UK in 1959, and in urban planning at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1979.
Daim is known among bankers, tycoons, politicians and the media as the mastermind who rescued Malaysia from economic turmoil in the 1980s and again in the 1990s.
Characterised by business observers as restrained yet fiercely shrewd as an economist and businessman, he is best known as former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s chief economic troubleshooter.
During his first tenure as finance minister from 1984 to 1991, Daim not only helped restore the country’s economy but also enabled Malaysia to record an economic growth that was among the highest in Asia.
From a negative growth of 1.03% in 1985, the gross domestic product rebounded to 9.06% in 1989, setting the nation on a sound footing for greater expansion.
Comeback to lead the Council of Eminent Persons
Daim, who had garnered a reputation of being Mahathir’s right-hand man, made a comeback in the political arena after the 2018 general election, when he was given the responsibility of leading the Pakatan Harapan government’s Council of Eminent Persons.
The council included former Bank Negara Malaysia governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz, former Petronas president Hassan Marican, tycoon Robert Kuok and economist Jomo Kwame Sundaram.
The council’s purpose was to advise the government on economic and financial matters.
