KUALA LUMPUR, May 2 — The World Bank’s report on the country’s brain drain released last Thursday showed that the number of Malaysians with tertiary education who moved abroad tripled in the last two decades.

Two out of every 10 Malaysians with a tertiary education opted for either OECD countries or Singapore.

As of 2010, the report estimated the Malaysian diaspora at about one million, of whom one-third were tertiary educated.

It was noted, however, that the estimated size of the Malaysian diaspora is a conservative one due to the lack of information on the breakdown of the non-resident population of Singapore which could possibly have a high percentage of Malaysians.

The talent outflow threatens to erode the country’s skills base and derail its ambition to be a developed high-income nation by 2020, more so as the loss of the nation’s “best and brightest” was not being replaced with talent inflow.

The number of expatriates in Peninsular Malaysia fell by about one-quarter between 2004 and 2010, with all the major source countries but two registering declines and in the case of advanced countries, double-digit contractions.

The exceptions were Bangladesh and Iran which registered a stunning growth in expatriates of 234 and 194 per cent respectively. The two countries now constitute nearly one-tenth of the expatriate community in Peninsular Malaysia.

The report had a survey which posed the question “I intend to return to Malaysia for good at some point in my life” to overseas Malaysians, and 65 of 149 had responded “Not sure” while 32 responded “Agree”, 13 responded “Strongly Agree”, 22 said they “Strongly Disagree” and 17 said they “Disagree”.

As part of the survey, overseas Malaysians were asked what policy initiatives could possibly entice migrants to return.

The top picks were a change in the country’s race-based policies and fundamental reforms in the public sector with “Paradigm shift away from race-based towards needs-based affirmative action” and “Evidence of fundamental and positive change in the government/public sector” receiving 87 and 82 per cent positive responses respectively.

The rate of talent migration grew at a rate of 4.2 per cent between 2000 and 2010, with Singapore having the most number of Malaysian tertiary-level graduates at 121,662, followed by Australia at 51,556 and the US with 34,045.

The charts in this article offer a look at the numbers in the report: “Malaysia Economic Monitor: Brain Drain”.