During a recent episode on Malaysia’s number one podcast show (kena lah jack sket kan haha), Shahril Hamdan mentioned that it would be a good thing if we can attract Singaporean companies to relocate to Malaysia – either in JB or in KL – not only to take advantage of the cheaper Ringgit, but also to benefit from the world class infrastructure and talent pool available in Malaysia.
Of course, Shahril (who I consider to be a good friend of mine) was speaking in the context of making the best of the current situation with the Ringgit continuing to weaken – a case of looking at the silver lining amidst cloudy days.
I felt compelled, however, to write about this because I know for a fact that there is already a government agency called InvestKL whose very mandate is to attract MNCs to set up their regional headquarters here in Kuala Lumpur. InvestKL was one of the key initiatives under the Greater KL National Key Economic Area (“NKEA”) in the Economic Transformation Programme, and as a former Director for the Greater KL NKEA, I had the privilege of sitting on the Board of Directors for InvestKL.
The work that InvestKL does is very interesting, and important: how to make Greater Kuala Lumpur a true regional hub for talent and high value economic activity. Indeed, when global oil prices declined rapidly some time back around the mid-2010s, InvestKL did sterling work to attract a number of oil & gas companies, then based in Singapore, to relocate to Kuala Lumpur and take advantage of cheaper costs, while still enjoying the quality infrastructure and deep talent pool that KL had to offer.
I am proud to say that despite budgetary constraints (we had to go cap-in-hand every year to Ministries to beg for money to continue to operate!) and the challenges of trying to sell Malaysia as a regional hub (very very hard to do when you have a neighbour like Singapore at your doorstep!) I know that my colleagues and friends in InvestKL are continuing to do great work in helping to contribute to the Malaysian economy through the addition of high-value added economic activity.