KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 21 (IslamOnline) - Malaysia will give special attention to safeguard the interests of the poor and offer them opportunities to integrate in the development process of the country, news agencies said on Saturday.

In the country’s new budget presented on Friday at the Parliament in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who is also the acting Finance Minister said 67,200 people would benefit from government aids.

More efforts will also be made to continue low and medium cost housing programs to ensure that the lower income group can afford comfortable accommodation. One billion Malaysian Ringgit - one U.S. dollar is converted into RM3.80 - has been allocated for this, a Bernama report said.

The government also aims to achieve zero squatters by 2005 with the building of 65, 778 housing units that would house the squatters who has already applied for a home.

It is not possible for the authorities to provide a home for all but it says it is making huge efforts to cater for the poor. Malaysia is aiming at becoming a fully developed nation by 2020. It believes that housing; employment and the development of local industries may help the nation achieve this status.

Education, however, is a major priority of the current government the Prime Minister said. The country has a high literacy rate but efforts are to be done to continue providing education to the poor.

Mahathir said his government has decided to spend over US100 million a year for primary schools. This is destined to supply food and textbooks, school uniforms for those who come from poor families, benefiting 730,000 students.

Students with divorced parents also enjoys these facilities as well as many students of Indonesian parents, who are either permanent residents or naturalized Malaysian citizens.

A new concept will be introduced to help the poor and needy with tuition vouchers to these children while the teachers who do so outside school hours would be able to earn an extra income.

The elaborate plan for the poor also touches on health, and for those who are unable to afford treatment for chronic illnesses, a fund is being set up to cater to that.

Mahathir’s budget speech represents a sudden shift in Malaysia’s policy. It shows the desire to end too much dependency on foreign capital. Malaysia will now focus on building up its local industries and service sector and rely less on foreign trade and investment as its engine of growth, the Straits Times of Singapore said.

There will be more money for key growth sectors such as tourism, transport and agriculture as well as tax cuts for small and medium enterprises.

Malaysia had relied on heavy infusions of foreign capital in the past to fuel its rapid growth as a manufacturing base, but Mahathir said that it now had to change course to avoid the shocks that came with heavy reliance on foreign direct investments (FDIs).

Malaysia attracted approved manufacturing FDIs of only RM2.16 billion (S$1 billion) for the first six months of this year. This is a sharp drop from the RM18.82 billion it pulled in for the whole of last year.

Malaysia, the world's 14th biggest trading nation, grew by 0.4 per cent last year - a sharp deceleration from its 8.3 per cent expansion in 2000. Malaysia's manufactured goods, forming 90 per cent of its total exports, was hit badly by the global economic slowdown.

'Everybody is feeling the pinch because the amount of FDIs has shrunk and then, a lot of that is going to China,' Mahathir told a news conference later.