LANGKAWI: This year's Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace exhibition (Lima '23) will see a record RM18 billion worth of agreements being made.
Defence Minister Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan said the bulk of the deals would involve the Defence Ministry, at just over RM10 billion.
The remainder, he said, would be spread among various ministries, chief among them the Transport Ministry.
Mohamad said the majority of the deals would be in the form of letters of acceptance (LoAs) and letters of intent (LoIs).
"Most of what we will hand out are LoAs and if we have reached an agreement, we will sign to finalise.
"So the result of organising Lima '23 this time in terms of commercial value, will see the Defence Ministry and also the Transport Ministry achieve good results which will be good for the country and also our local industries," he said.
Mohamad was speaking to reporters after checking on preparations at both the aerospace and maritime segments at the Mahsuri International Exhibition Centre and Resorts World Langkawi, respectively.
He said he was satisfied with the preparation work and also Lima '23 as a whole.
"The participation (by local and foreign companies) is encouraging... local companies will be able to showcase their products to the world and they can also look at what others are doing and possible business deals.
"We have 119 aircraft on both aerial and static display, and these include five aerobatics teams... six if you include the Royal Malaysian Air Force," he said.
Four of the foreign aerobatics teams are making returns to Lima. They are the Russian Knights, the Black Eagles of South Korea, Team Jupiter from Indonesia and China's August 1st.
Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates' Fursan Al-Emarat is making its debut at Lima '23.
At the maritime segment, 40 vessels were registered for Lima '23, including 14 from 12 foreign countries.
However, it was later learnt that one — the littoral combat ship USS Mobile of the United States Navy — had to pull out due to an "operational engagement".
Asked why there were 40 vessels when the Lima '23 organisers had, on its website several months ago, stated that the estimated number of ships taking part would be 100, Mohamad said there must have been a mistake.
"All the ships want to be as close as possible (to shore). There is no point having 100 ships as this would mean they would be (anchored) far away," he said.
In fact, he said, there were last minute applications from countries for their vessels to take part in Lima '23, but these had to be turned away due to space concerns.
"We didn't reject them... but we had to turn them away due to constraints," he stressed.
For the record, in 2009, there were 99 warships and other vessels anchored off the island for Lima.