PETALING JAYA: Datuk Seri Dr Noor Azlan Ghazali and Dr Yeah Kim Leng have been reappointed as external members of Bank Negara’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) for a two-year term effective April 1. 

This follows from the enactment of the Central Bank of Malaysia Act 2009, which provides for the appointment of external members to the MPC. 

The MPC is responsible for formulating monetary policies for the conduct of monetary policy operations. 

Monetary policy is autonomously formulated and implemented by Bank Negara, as mandated in the 2009 Act. 

Dr Noor Azlan is the vice-chancellor and professor of Economics at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, having begun his career at the university almost 30 years ago as a lecturer. He specialises in business and financial economics. 

He was seconded to the Prime Minister’s Department (2006-2009), serving amongst others, as the head of the Special Consultancy Team on Globalization for the National Economic Action Council (NEAC) and the director of the Malaysian Development Institute (MDI) at the Economic Planning Unit (EPU). 

He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA and a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University.

Dr Yeah is a professor of Economics at Sunway University Business School, Sunway University, after serving as the dean of the School of Business at the Malaysia University of Science and Technology. 

He is also the director of the Economic Studies Program at the Jeffrey Cheah Institute on South-East Asia, a senior fellow of the Jeffrey Sachs Center on Sustainable Development and a vice-president of the Malaysian Economic Association.  

He was previously the group chief economist at RAM Holdings Bhd, having served the organisation for two decades (1994 – 2014). 

Prior to joining RAM, Dr Yeah was a senior analyst at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies Malaysia. He holds a PhD in Agriculture and Resource Economics and an MBA from the University of Hawaii, USA.