Dato' Mustapa Mohamad, Malaysia's Minister for International Trade and Industry and also the chairman of Khazanah Nasional just met all the Khazanah scholars in London at the Malaysian High Commission. As usual he wanted to be as informal and as friendly as possible, so he declined to use a microphone. He gave a speech that highlighted the thrust of Malaysia's economic growth and its dependence on human capital as it progressively expended its natural resources. He revealed that the Malaysian government spends RM3 billion a year to provide loans and scholarships to Malaysian students and that 33-40% of Malaysian students in the UK are on scholarships or loans. This, in fact, makes Malaysia the top country in the world to spend so much on sending its students overseas, especially at the undergraduate level. Thus he said it was important for these students to bring their degrees back and help the nation move forward.
Dato' Mustapa then explained about his trips overseas to Delhi, Amsterdam and Frankfurt to promote FDIs in Malaysia. His schedule was absolutely packed. This was followed by a discussion about Khazanah's portfolio.
He hoped that all the scholars were well-read on current issues in Malaysia, and he spoke briefly about Malaysia's Economic Plan for the next 5 years, which would be tabled soon. In particular he spoke about the need for wages to rise in Malaysia: if the wages for an engineer in Malaysia are an order of magnitude lower that those of an engineer in the UK after all costs of living have been imputed, "we cannot expect Malaysians to be charitable and come back to work in the country".
Finally he spoke about London's position as a political hotbed and he warned us not to be swayed by some opposition politicians who were coming to London soon. Anyway, Khazanah scholars are not supposed to be involved in politics!
This was followed by a Q&A session, where a few scholars including myself asked questions (my question(s) was number 2).
1. Net FDIs to Malaysia were zero last year. How will the Malaysian government fix this problem? Also, I'm not trying to be political, but what are your views on the oil royalties and the Kelantan issue?
2. What do you think about the future significance of the Iskandar Region, and in view of Singapore's position as a financial hub, how will it affect Malaysia's aspirations to become a hub for Islamic finance?
3. Bio Valley in Malaysia has been a failure. Where do we go from here and what lessons have we learnt from that?
4. In Malaysian corporates and multinationals based in Malaysia, most directorships are held by non-Malaysians. Is the government doing much to address this?
5. Collaboration between academia and industry in Malaysia is not very strong. What is being done about this?
He provided very well-thought out answers, but I shall not enumerate them here because they were rather long. However, there was plenty of food for thought. Our chairman is indeed quite a friendly guy.
Otherwise I spent the time getting to know the other Khazanah scholars from London and Oxford. Intellectual conversation was the order of the day and the networking was great. Good start to the day!
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4 comments:
i'm interested to know how he answered question one :D
知足常樂~~有這麼好的文章，人生足矣~~哈哈........................................
*thumbs up...
such intellectuality...lol
Summarise how he answered YOUR question!
=)
Q1: Basically, a lot of people have been trying to paint Dato' Mustapa as a traitor because he is Kelantanese and is supposed to be fighting for Kelantan's "rights", i.e. oil royalties. But under a Petroleum Act 1971 all oil found on Malaysian soil or within 200 nautical miles of Malaysian coastline belongs solely to Petronas, and they may give out compassionate money as and when they see fit, so says the law. So he technically shouldn't get involved in it :P Politics. As for net FDIs, many Southeast Asian countries, not just Malaysia, saw significant outflows in the last 2 years. We have simply suffered more because we are judged to be at greater risk - also companies like YTL are investing heavily overseas, which contributes to outflows.
Q2: Singapore is getting crowded and their ability to keep costs (office space, rentals) at bay for much longer is tenuous at best. Thus the vaunted Iskandar region offers quality and quantity to multinationals in Singapore, and it's only 40 minutes away. Of course Singapore won't give up its dominant multinational-hub position so easily, but its actually in the interest of both countries to cooperate.
;)
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