12 MGCC PERSPECTIVES MAY JUN 2018 MGCC IN DIALOGUE OUTLOOK Before the recent general election GTAI caught up with Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad to find out his stance on foreign investment by Rainer Jaensch Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad will Back High Tech Foreign Investment Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad had already assured that Malaysia would continue to extend a warm welcome to foreign investors before the election In an exclusive interview with Germany Trade and Invest in October 2017 he gave an inside view of his economic political ideas His inputs can now play an important part in his role as the new Prime Minister We will be very business friendly including being friendly to foreign investors We will concentrate on investment into manufacturing with high tech We will make it easy for people to bring in capital and also to take out their profits explained Dr Mahathir He added The current bureaucratic procedure is very lengthy and difficult and often they have to make reference to the political directive from the government And also in many cases the foreign direct investment is not very clear cut The focus now is more on Chinese investment but Chinese investment is not about manufacturing goods Instead it is about buying land developing land and the possibility of bringing Chinese migrants to stay in these new cities that they are building That is not what we want from foreign direct investment Dr Mahathir is also critical about Chinese automobile enterprise Geely which entered the market with a 49 9 stake in the national automobile Proton During his years of governing Proton was not created to produce profits but rather to bring forward the technology skills of the country The production of an automobile needs an extensive network of suppliers Therefore to increase the learning effect among Malaysians he proposed that a Malaysian automobile must be manufactured by Malaysians Foreign Investors are still welcome to this country if they bring in new technologies At the beginning the stress was more on creating employment opportunities for Malaysians Today we have upgraded our industrial landscape to IT and other more sophisticated industries and therefore we would like foreign investment to focus on those areas he explained This also appears to be the aim of the past government The former Minister for Foreign Trade and Industry Mustapa Mohamed during his visit to Hamburg in October 2017 declared that Malaysia will continue to focus on quality investment from Germany especially in automation and Industrie 4 0 Free Trade Must Also Benefit Small Enterprises Dr Mahathir has one thing in common with Donald Trump the President of USA both are against the Trans Pacific Partnership TPP Agreement but for different reasons In a speech in March 2015 the former PM explained Free trade agreements are not about free but regulated trade And this is to a large extent defined by the most powerful nation on earth What s frightening with TPP is particularly the possibility in which companies from big nations can sue foreign governments and hold them liable for large amounts of lost profits According to Dr Mahathir with the current free trade negotiations between the European Free trade agreements are not about free but regulated trade

Vorschau MGCC Perspectives May/Jun 2018 Seite 14
Hinweis: Dies ist eine maschinenlesbare No-Flash Ansicht.
Klicken Sie hier um zur Online-Version zu gelangen.