The programme aimed to shift affirmative action from being ethnically based to being need-based hence becoming more competitive, market and investor-friendly.
The goal of the NEM, according to Najib, is to "transform the Malaysian economy to become one with high incomes and quality growth" by 2020.
[3][4] Among other reforms meant to accomplish this goal, the Najib administration have also claimed that the NEM is to empower the private sector and to reduce fiscal disparity between the wealthiest and poorest of Malaysians.
[9] A spokesman for Khazanah Nasional Berhad, a government agency, stepped out to support it as a "realistic outline", provided that it is effectively implemented and embraced by the public.
[10] Democratic Action Party spokesperson Tony Pua said that Najib's launching of a new unit to strengthen Bumiputera economic participation has nullified his own New Economic Model and is nothing more than an endorsement of the controversial NEP, which favours the influential elite, and a copycat of Mahathir's mega-projects and privatisation policies of the 1990s.