Malaysia is unlikely to achieve a firm recovery in growth until 2011 but will use the downturn to form a “new economic model” focused on services rather than manufacturing, Najib Razak, the country's finance minister, said yesterday.

Mr Najib, who is expected to become Malaysia's prime minister on March 31, said his goal was to increase the service sector to 70 per cent of gross domestic product, from 54 per cent, in an effort to establish “a knowledge-based economy” that would be less reliant on manufactured exports.

“This is part of the transformation of the Malaysian economy. Services offer tremendous scope for growth,” Mr Najib told the Financial Times in a rare interview with a foreign publication a day after he published a M$60bn ($16bn, €13bn, ￡12bn) stimulus package to prevent the economy from sinking into a deep recession. The government forecasts a growth rate of plus 1 per cent to minus 1 per cent for 2009.