InvestKL CEO Datuk Zainal Amanshah
KUALA LUMPUR: InvestKL is seeking to extend its success to attract more multi-national corporations (MNCs) to invest in Malaysia following the previous year's success where it attracted France's telco Orange, Sweden's Electrolux and US' MetLife.
InvestKL CEO Datuk Zainal Amanshah said InvestKL remains focused on attracting high value, high skilled and innovation-led investments to create quality jobs for Malaysians and targets to attract 13 MNCs this year.
“Despite a slower global economy and US-China trade tensions, our investment pipeline is resilient as investment decisions are made over a longer period. We are confident of attracting similar investments this year,” he said at a media briefing on Monday.
“We are focused on attracting MNCs from the US, Europe, China, Japan and South Korea. These countries are strong in the six sectors that we are pursuing. These sectors are smart technologies, consumer technologies, e-commerce, medical devices, industrial automation, as well as energy and renewables.”
Last year, InvestKL bucked the global investment trend by attracting 12 innovative global MNCs. They are Fortune 500 companies, they include Electrolux (Sweden), EY (UK), Accenture (Ireland), Persolkelley (Japan/ US), China Pacific Construction Group (China); Wood (UK); and hidden champions such as Pickles Auctions (Australia), United Imaging (China), and Bertling (Germany); and Zalora (Germany).
Since InvestKL started in 2011, it has attracted 78 MNCs with approved and committed investments of RM11.7bil as well as the creation of 11,693 regional high-skilled jobs.
“With approved and committed investments of RM2.3bil, a total of 1,339 jobs have been created,” he said.
In the seven years from 2011-2018, he said RM6.63bil or 57% of the RM11.7bil investments have been realised.
In addition, 7,516 or 64% of the 11,693 high skilled regional jobs are already on the payroll. Of these 7,516 jobs, 80% employed are Malaysians with an average annual income of RM110,124 or US$26,610 based on the exchange rate on 4.13.
Zainal added investors are positive about Industry 4.0 which aims to make our country the prime destination for manufacturing and services.
Launched by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry last year, the blueprint which outlined concrete measures enhances our value propositions to investors in areas such as artificial intelligence, big data analytics, Internet of Things, cloud computing and cybersecurity.
“Kuala Lumpur remains a key investment destination. Our fundamentals remain strong and stable. Malaysia has considerable advantages in terms of location, infrastructure quality and resources,” he said.
Zainal added the government was committed to strengthening ecosystems around Industry 4.0.
In Budget 2019, the government allocated RM5bil to support measures to accelerate the adoption of Industry 4.0 especially in areas of talent development, research & development, and encouraging industries to utilise artificial intelligence.
“InvestKL continues to support these initiatives in two areas; talent, and small, medium enterprise (SME) development. For talent, we have nurtured locals to be global corporate leaders under the Malaysia Global Talent (MGT) programme,” he said.
The MGT was launched last year in order to facilitate programme that would enhance local talents skill sets to be on par with global standards. The scale of the MNCs’ capabilities, the rapid developments, the sharing of knowledge and best practices will prepare Malaysian talent for the future of work with the MNCs.
“For SMEs, we will be actively promoting the collaborations with the MNCs. The aim is to empower these SMEs to move up the value chain and eventually scale out of Malaysia. These partnerships will complement the government’s initiatives to help these firms build “deep enterprise” mindset and capabilities,” he also said.
In addition, the MNCs have continued to benefit the economy. The real estate, hospitality, education, medical, tourism, and entertainment industries have all benefitted with the real estate sector having enjoyed an estimated RM128mil in office space rentals in 2018.
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