To make Malaysia’s circular economy work, effective coordination is key

MALAYSIA stands at a precipice of transformation. With the Ungku Aziz Centre’s circular economy framework poised for launch, there is a palpable sense of hope that we can finally decouple economic growth from resource exhaustion. In an era where straits blockades, pandemics, and geopolitical tantrums snap supply chains like twigs, embracing a circular model — repair, reuse, recycle — is no longer an environmental luxury. It is an economic shock absorber.

But let us be brutally honest: good frameworks don’t fail. Poor coordination fails. And as experts rightly argue, if the ambitious shift to a circular economy is to survive contact with reality, the Ministry of Economy must hold the wheel. Not any other Ministry. The central coordinating body must reside under Economy Ministry.

Here is why. History is littered with circular economy pilots that crashed on takeoff. From European EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility) schemes that became bureaucratic sinkholes to Asian zero-waste towns that quietly abandoned targets, the root cause is rarely technology. It is always coordination.

A circular economy is not a single policy; it is a living ecosystem. It demands that the Domestic Trade Ministry change procurement rules to favor remanufactured goods. It demands that the Housing and Local Government Ministry redesign waste collection not as a sanitation chore, but as a resource supply chain. It demands that the Finance Ministry tax virgin plastics while subsidising repair cafes. And it demands that the Education Ministry teach six-year-olds the difference between biodegradable and compostable.

Who currently sits in the room with authority over all of them? Nobody. That is the problem. Some will argue that the natural home for circularity is the Natural Resources Ministry, responsible for the environment. That is precisely where coordination goes to die.

Environment ministries typically command regulation but no budget leverage. They can fine a factory, but they cannot rewire an industrial park’s logistics. Natural resource ministries manage extraction—the linear economy’s front door. They are the last people to ask to close the loop.

The Economy Ministry, however, holds the three levers that matter: planning, investment coordination, and performance monitoring. It oversees the Thirteen Malaysia Plan, the National Investment Aspirations, and the secretariat for most cross-ministerial special projects. Without its stamp, no ministry moves.

More crucially, the circular economy is a supply chain strategy disguised as an environmental policy. When global trade is disrupted, it is not the purity of our rivers that saves manufacturers, it is the availability of recycled aluminum or refurbished bearings locally. The Economy Ministry already models supply chain resilience for critical sectors. Extending that mandate to secondary material flows is logical, not radical.

Make no mistake - the hardest barriers are not technical. They are behavioural. Businesses will not retool for circularity unless they see a predictable regulatory horizon. Consumers will not sort waste into seven bins if the collection truck mixes it all anyway.

This is why close monitoring is non-negotiable. Not policing, but visibility. The Economy Ministry should publish a quarterly Circular Economy Dashboard with just six KPIs: material circularity rate, secondary material import dependence, repair sector growth, waste leakage to landfills, remanufacturing output, and—critically—cross-ministry meeting attendance.

Yes, attendance. If the Housing Ministry misses three circular economy task force meetings in a row, the public should know.

There is a risk that the Ungku Aziz Centre’s framework, however brilliant, will be handed to a standing committee without real teeth. We have seen this before with the National Green Technology Policy and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) council. Noble documents. Impressive launches. Followed by siloed action, duplicative pilots, and eventually, amnesia.

To avoid that fate, the Economy Ministry must personally chair the implementation steering committee—not send a deputy secretary. Circularity is not a side project. It is a structural economic reform. It deserves Cabinet-level attention until the first secondary materials exchange goes live, the first industrial symbiosis park breaks ground, and the first generation of Malaysians grows up knowing that waste is simply a design flaw.

Malaysia has a rare advantage: we are launching this framework after watching others fail. We know that the circular economy cannot be a romantic grassroots movement alone, nor a top-down dictate alone. It requires a conductor. And in the Malaysian government’s orchestra, only the Ministry of Economy has the baton long enough to reach all of government.

Give them the job. Give them a dashboard. And give them the public mandate to chase errant ministries across departments. Because when the next trade disruption hits and it will, we will either have a circular buffer stock of local materials, or we will be apologising for another well-intentioned framework gathering dust.

Professor Datuk Dr Ahmad Ibrahim is affiliated with the Tan Sri Omar Centre for STI Policy Studies at UCSI University and is an Adjunct Professor at the Ungku Aziz Centre for Development Studies, Universiti Malaya. The views expressed in this article are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Sinar Daily.