Malaysia ranks 34th on International Property Rights Index

KUCHING: Malaysia placed 34th on the 2018 International Property Rights Index launched by the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs ( IDEAS) and Property Rights Alliance, in cooperation with 113 think tanks across the world and in partnership with the Free Market Foundation in South Africa.

The Index measures the strength of physical property rights, intellectual property rights, and the legal and political environments that contain them.

On the release, Malaysia’s IPRI score has dropped by 0.11 points to 6.491. This resulted in Malaysia dropping from 6th place in Asia and Oceania region (27th globally) to 7th place (34th place globally).

Of the three components of the index (Legal and Political; Physical property rights; and Intellectual property component), only the Physical Property component recorded a small increase in scores (an increase of 0.062 to 7.656). Malaysia’s score on the Intellectual Property component dropped by 0.32 points to 6.105, while the score for Legal and Political component experienced a small reduction of 0.09 to 5.713.

Commenting on the result of the Index, IDEAS chief executive officer Ali Salman said that the result is worrying especially on the IP rights component.

He urged for the government to take steps to improve the situation.

This includes ensuring legislation maximises the scope for new IP and removing any unnecessary constraints.

“The government should also improve IP enforcement agency capacity to reduce backlogs and increase efficiency of process for recognising legitimate intellectual property,” he added in a statement.

Worldwide, six billion people suffer from inadequate protection of their property rights. Only 758 million people, 13 percent of the world, enjoy adequate protections for their artistic works, inventions, and private property.

Three countries, Finland, New Zealand, and Switzerland (a quarter of one percent of the world) have achieved the highest property rights protections— according to the 2018 International Property Rights Index

“Alarmingly, for the first time the United States fell from being first in the world for intellectual property protections to second, yielding to Finland, which also passed New Zealand to become 1st in the Index overall (8.69),” IDEAS said in a statement.

“The Index is also the first publication to utilize the recently updated Patent Rights Index developed by Professor Walter Park at American University.”

Property rights are a key indicator of economic success and political stability. Property rights are an essential component of prosperous and free societies.

This year, the report includes correlations with no less than 23 economic and social indicators, including 9 specific to e-commerce which displayed some of the strongest relationships the Index has ever discovered – suggesting rights play an important role in addressing internet access issues.

Property Rights are restricted by gender. Poor property rights protections are bad enough; however, the Gender Equality component of the Index reveals that several countries in the Middle East, North Africa and SubSaharan Africa regions continue to limit property ownership based solely on gender.