JULY 31 — If economic growth were a person, he would be the country’s biggest pop star. He dominates headlines. Everyone talks about him. Everyone feels they have played some part in his meteoric fame.
Yet many wonder whether they will ever get to meet him, let alone benefit from him. For many ordinary families, he remains someone they have only ever seen on their television screen, never at their own dinner table. Even less likely to show up with gifts or a feast to share.
That image of Mr Growth in a sequin jacket, skin-tight trousers, oversized sunglasses, and gleaming leather boots lingered in my mind as I listened to the Governor’s opening address at the Sasana Symposium this week.
He mentioned that “the priority now is to ensure that economic growth is not only reflected in our statistics but felt at the dinner table. That has always been the ultimate purpose of these reforms.”
It is reassuring to hear that our market regulator is committed not only to future-proofing the financial system but, more importantly, to ensuring that it continues to finance the building of a more resilient and prosperous society amid growing uncertainty driven by geopolitical fragmentation, artificial intelligence, and climate change.
But I found myself thinking that such commitments carry weight only when they are anchored in public trust. And public trust, after all, rests not on promises, but on evidence. Evidence that shows not only that the economy is growing, but who is benefiting from that growth, and who is being left behind.
In short, many are asking, why has Mr Growth not yet shown up at their dinner table?
That question neatly sums up a conversation I had this morning with a Grab driver on my way to another discourse, this time on Islamic finance.
An answer may lie in a report published by the McKinsey Global Institute just a few weeks ago. It warns against mistaking Mr Growth for his fictitious twin brother, Balance Sheet Growth.
According to the report, much of the world’s new wealth comes not from investments in productive assets, but from rising market prices of existing assets and financial claims. These “paper gains”, accessible to only an affluent few, were roughly twice as large in 2025 as the average recorded between 2000 and 2024.
By contrast, wealth created through real investment, investment that expands the economy’s capacity to produce future goods and services and ultimately makes everyone else richer, accounted for a smaller share last year.
The more important question, then, is who keeps feeding Mr Growth’s larger twin?
It is difficult to tell with certainty. But the swelling size of borrowing documented by McKinsey suggests where we should begin looking.
Financial markets today increasingly exhibit what Mariana Mazzucato famously describes as “finance finances finance.” Once a servant of enterprise and innovation, the market has become its own master. Instead of directing newly created money towards ideas, skills, and labour that generate greater, to borrow from Marx, use value of things essential to human well-being, it siphons capital into speculative and extractive activities, enriching itself through exploding exchange value.
Whether the Malaysian banking sector behaves in the same way is far less clear from the broad sectoral financing statistics routinely published. What is needed is much more granular data showing where financing ends up flowing and the magnitude of the multiplier effects it creates.
Consider two housing loans. One finances the construction of a new house. The other finances the purchase of an existing house by a buyer expecting future capital appreciation. Both would be lumped into the same item line of residential property purchase, yet their implications for welfare are fundamentally different. While the former creates jobs and incomes for architects, engineers, and construction workers, the latter merely changes the name on the title deed.
And when large volumes of credit chase the same stock of housing, the consequences are familiar. Homes become less affordable, leaving many with no choice but to rent. As landlords seek to pass on higher acquisition, maintenance, and debt-servicing costs, rents start to climb, leaving households with less and less to spend on essentials such as healthcare and education.
Better metrics on the destination of financing are not a statistical luxury. They are a policy necessity if finance is to find its way back to its ultimate purpose, its telos. With them, one can hope that, one day, our banking system will appraise and price households and businesses not merely against the risks they pose or the collateral they can pledge, but by the value they are capable of creating.
That, surely, is when Mr Growth finally takes his seat at everyone’s dinner table.
* Dr Nazrul Hazizi Noordin is an assistant professor at the Institute of Islamic Banking and Finance, International Islamic University Malaysia.
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of NewsPulse.
