How’s the Malaysian economy?

That was part of a dim sum lunch conversation in Petaling Jaya among my businessman friends.

A 60-something businessman said the Malaysian economy was doing well. He pointed to Forbes Asia’s Best Under a Billion 2026 list, released that day.

On that list, which tracks the top 200 public mid-cap companies across the entire Asia-Pacific region, Malaysian representation more than doubled to 19 companies. That placed Malaysia third overall in Asia, behind economic juggernauts China (28) and India (27).

“Singapore managed just three companies,” he said. “Our economy is good because of the boom of data centers.”

Forbes credited the country’s surging artificial intelligence and data center infrastructure boom for lifting over half of those 19 Malaysian companies onto the list. You won’t find the multi-­billion-dollar data center operators themselves on this specific list.

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The hyperscale facility owners in Malaysia are either foreign cloud giants like Google, Microsoft, and AWS, or mega-cap local players like YTL that far exceed the list’s US$1 billion revenue limit.

Instead, Forbes captured the domestic supply chain riding their coattails, the local manufacturers, engineers and infrastructure developers providing the essential “picks and shovels” to power, connect, and house those facilities. This includes hardware manufacturers like Southern Cable Group (supplying high-voltage power cables), technology and engineering specialists like Frontken Corporation, Cloudpoint Technology, and ITMAX System, alongside industrial park developers like AME Elite Consortium.

“Who said the economy of Malaysia is doing badly? We are doing well. The government is doing the right thing,” the businessman declared.

“It is because you are in the data center business,” a friend who was a quantity surveyor replied in a teasing tone. “It is not good for us.”

As a political columnist, I felt compelled to give a political angle to the conversation.

“Look at the state polls like Johor or the coming Aug 12 election in Negri Sembilan, whether the economy is performing well or poorly, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s administration rarely gets the political credit for economic wins,” I said.

“Depending on who you talk to over teh tarik or scroll past on social media, the ground sentiment is negative. For the average person on the street, headline growth and multibillion-ringgit investments mean very little when set against daily pressures. They feel the rising grocery bills, the squeeze of targeted fuel subsidies, higher SST taxes, and stagnant wages.”

As I reflected on our lunch ­conversation while writing this column, it struck me that explaining this disconnect between corporate optimism and ground-level frustration doesn’t require complex macroeconomic charts. You can measure it with a benchmark every Malaysian understands: the Nasi Lemak Index.

Much like The Economist’s Big Mac Index, tracking the price of a standard packet of nasi lemak biasa, rice, sambal, a slice of cucumber, half a boiled egg and peanuts, reveals the true story of domestic purchasing power far better than quarterly GDP figures.

To see how this plays out in real terms, I asked an economist friend to trace the trajectory of the humble roadside packet under Anwar’s term.

When the administration took office in late 2022, a basic roadside packet in the Klang Valley averaged 2  to 2.50 Malaysian ringgit (50 to 62 US cents). By late 2024, as supply chain pressures, diesel subsidy rationalization, and SST adjustments rippled through the logistics chain, that baseline hit 3.50 ringgit. Today, finding a standard packet for under 4 to 4.50 ringgit is rare.

During that same timeframe, official figures from the Department of Statistics Malaysia show median formal wages growing at an incremental rate. While headline Consumer Price Index (CPI) numbers report mild inflation under 2 percent, essential everyday expenses tell a starkly different story.

In under four years, the everyday cost of living on the street has effectively doubled.

This rise explains Malaysia’s two distinct realities today.

For the businessman involved in data centers, the economic engine is humming. But for the average Malaysian whose daily wages haven’t doubled alongside their morning nasi lemak, the macro gains are a different world.

This disconnect was on full display in the recent Johor and Negri Sembilan state polls.

Macroeconomic wins rarely win votes on the ground. In Johor, despite headlines about massive foreign investment and data center hubs, voters cared far more about local delivery, strong candidates and basic party machinery. The corporate hype simply didn’t resonate with working-class families battling high daily expenses.

In Negri Sembilan, some voters used their ballots to vent frustration over bread-and-butter issues, like sticky food prices and the cost-of-living squeeze, rather than applaud national growth stats. Coupled with local political dynamics and Malay-Muslim identity politics, everyday survival took priority over headline economic figures.

For those eating dim sum in a high-end restaurant and those buying roadside nasi lemak, the economy is two completely different realities.

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The writer is an editor at The Star.

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