Najib launching the GITP at Genting Highlands
GENTING HIGHLANDS: The East Coast Economic Region (ECER) received a boost following the launching of the RM5bil Genting Integrated Tourism Plan (GITP) on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said the GITP would help to attract local and foreign investments to the ECER resulting in greater infrastructure development.
"I believe the Genting Integrated Tourism Plan will address the regional economic imbalance in infrastructure and encourage local and foreign investment flow into the east coast," he said when officiating the GITP and Twentieth Century Fox World here.
He said the GITP would complement the government's 12-year initiative launched in 2007 to develop and transform the east-coast region not only into a manufacturing and trading hub but a major tourist destination.
"In short, the ECER will be transformed into a distinctive, dynamic and competitive investment destination and developed region.
"The holistic transformation of ECER by 2020 is to be a region that captures investment of RM110bil and creating 560,000 jobs," he added.
He said the move by Genting augured well with efforts to attract more tourists into the country in line with Visit Malaysia Year 2014.
As the second largest foreign exchange earner contributing RM47.2bil to the gross national income, Najib said the government has set a target of 36 million tourist arrivals with receipts of RM168bil by 2020.
Najib said the GITP will include a RM1bil investment to set up the world's first international Twentieth Century Fox World park and the region's second Premium Outlet Centre offering branded goods.
Genting Malaysia Bhd chairman and chief executive Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay said although Resorts World Genting is a world renowned tourism destination with more than 20 million visitors over the last two years, the company was still not contented with its achievement.
He said the RM4bil investment under the GITP would be used to develop new hotels, infrastructure and amenities and modernise existing hotels by 2016.
Present at the event was Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products president Jeffrey Godsick.
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