PUTRAJAYA: Malaysians need not feel unduly worried or ashamed about working with neighbouring countries for mutual benefit, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said.

The Prime Minister said Malaysians should not continue to harbour fears about their own capabilities to make initiatives like the economic development corridor concept work.

"We should be more ashamed if we could not overcome poverty and backwardness of our own people," he said.

Abdullah said there were some parties who had expressed concerns and reservations about the Iskandar Development Region in southern Johor on its plans to leverage on the proximity to Singapore.

"In my mind, these concerns are unfounded," he said.

Abdullah said the economic corridors established by the Government would also build on the country's existing economic strengths and sectors to venture into new areas.

He said the corridors would take advantage of traditional urban centres like Penang and Johor Baru to create new growth areas.

"We do not plan to start new initiatives from scratch. For example, our foray into palm-based bio-diesel is due to our existing position as a global powerhouse in oil palm plantations and refining, while our recent focus on the halal food industry makes use of our strong links with the Muslim world and global logistics," he said.

He said the growth in traditional areas of growth like Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Johor Baru had been so rapid that they were fast reaching the levels of advanced countries.

"In a study due to be published by the National Productivity Centre soon, we have discovered that we are fast reaching the point when we can make apple-to-apple comparisons between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.

"It also means that for Malaysia as a whole to be a developed nation by the year 2020, we need to bring the rest of Malaysia up to par with Kuala Lumpur," he said.

Abdullah said that to achieve this, the Government had to address the large income gap between the urban and rural households, which had deteriorated from the ratio of 1 to 1.81 in 1999, to 1 to 2.11 in 2004.

He added that because the bumiputra community was largely located in rural areas, the income gap between them and non-bumiputras had remained high.