LONDON: MALAYSIA is seeking investments in high technology in line with the country’s goal to provide high income for its people, said Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
The investments, he said, were necessary to boost the country’s growth. Malaysia, he said, was a business-friendly nation and ready to fine-tune its policies to accommodate investors.
He expressed confidence that British investors would find Malaysia a comfortable investment destination.
“We are business-friendly. This is the same attitude that we adopted before. We are devising the policies to be friendly to business because we know business creates wealth and jobs for our people.”
Dr Mahathir said Malaysians were better trained and many were university graduates.
“We cannot expect them to do manual work assembling things like we used to. We need them to be engineers who work with new equipment and machinery, and who would be familiar with the need to maintain and repair machines.
“We welcome high-tech industries into Malaysia with the accompanying high income for our people. That is our need.
“We are receiving foreign direct investment and we have acquired foreign technologies.
“We are into information technology and want to exploit new businesses and methods to develop our country.
“When we were small, we were growing at a rate of 11 or 12 per cent. But now with a bigger economy, growth of the same volume will be reflected by a smaller percentage.
“We are still growing at a rate of more than four per cent and we hope we can do better this year with 4.4 or 4.6 per cent.”
He was speaking during a roundtable meeting with the British business community
organised by the Malaysian Investment Development Authority (Mida) and Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation.
Present were representatives from 50 organisations, including corporations like Jardine Matheson, HSBC Holdings Plc, Thales, Prudential, BAE Systems, Shell and Standard Chartered.
Also present were Foreign Minister Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah, Youth and Sports Minister Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman, Mida chief executive officer Datuk Azman Mahmud and Malaysian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, Datuk Mohamad Sadik Kethergany.
Also in attendance were the British High Commissioner to Malaysia, Charles Hay, and the British prime minister’s trade envoy to Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, Richard Graham.
On Sunday, Dr Mahathir delivered a talk titled “Democracy in Malaysia and Southeast Asia” at the Cambridge Union forum at Cambridge University.
While the subject matter covered was not much different from the talk he delivered at the Oxford Union in January, Dr Mahathir kept the floor engaged with his wit and humour, Bernama reported.
His speech at the Cambridge Union Society hall took the audience from the British rule narrative to the present-day woes faced by the country and the world.
He highlighted how Malaysia shifted its focus from the West to the East, and the fear of marginalisation of smaller countries by bigger nations.
Present were Dr Mahathir’s wife Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali, Cambridge undergraduates, Malaysian undergraduates and Malaysians in the United Kingdom.