KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia has what it takes to become a 'middle-power broker' to support the security of the global tech supply chain, Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz said.
In his keynote address at the PRAXIS 2024 organised by the Institute of Strategic & International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia, he said Malaysia has the industrial capacity, the track record and the rule of law to successfully reap the opportunity brought about by today's cold tech war, and is actively courting investments.
These investments are in related assets such as robotics, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered logistics suppliers and industrial real estate in the AI ecosystem.
Analysts have estimated that government initiatives, such as the Chips Acts, may inject roughly US$100 billion into the semiconductor industry across the US, Europe and Asia.
"Malaysia's 50-year-old semiconductor sector places us in an excellent position to reap such opportunities. "This is why we introduced the National Semiconductor Strategy (NSS), to move our semiconductor producers up the global value chain for us to export more higher-value products," he said.
Tengku Zafrul said Malaysia must also apply data-driven solutions to help its agenda and to this end, MITI has proposed to establish an Integrated Digital
Platform, which consists of a Supply Chain Intelligent Management System; a Business Continuity App and Virtual Center of Excellence at today's National Investment Council.
"Together, all these will map, gather and analyse real-time data from the supply chains of critical industries in Malaysia, and to clearly see how one sector's supply chain supports another sector," he said.