EV investments will have a positive spillover effect for Malaysia, says Zafrul

The Star

Attracting EV companies "will give spillover effect to the Malaysian companies, the SMEs and Malaysian corporates supplying to this group," Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz, Malaysia's minister of investment, trade and industry, tells CNBC's JP Ong on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Jakarta.  WATCH MORE: https://thestartv.com/c/news SUBSCRIBE: https://cutt.ly/TheStar LIKE: https://fb.com/TheStarOnline

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00:00 When you look at the global supply chain today, people are re-looking, re-aligning their global

00:04 supply chain to ensure the security of supply chain, the resiliency of their supply chain.

00:10 So if ASEAN can act as a group, of course, there are certain parts that can be done in

00:14 Indonesia, some in Malaysia, some in Indonesia's rich nickel, for example, so there's downstream

00:21 opportunities there. Similarly, in the Philippines and Malaysia, we have other strengths as well

00:27 because we bring the supply chain to ASEAN, then these companies will come to ASEAN. I

00:32 mean, I give example of Singapore. Singapore and Malaysia work closely, complement each

00:37 other in some sectors like the data centres, right? As you know, there's a moratorium on

00:41 data centres in Singapore, so the companies could be based in Singapore, but the operations

00:46 are based in Malaysia. So I believe that there is a win-win situation. Of course, healthy

00:51 competition is also good, right? Healthy competition brings up productivity, etc. But to me, we

01:01 were in Semarang two weeks ago with ASEAN Economic Ministers for the class economic

01:05 pillars and it was presented that nine out of ten EV companies, the top ten largest,

01:12 nine of them are in ASEAN, right? So not just in one particular country, but spread out

01:16 in ASEAN. Right, and speaking of big companies, of

01:19 course, a lot has been talked about with regards to where Tesla might set up their beachhead

01:24 if they do it this year or the next. And it seems that again, out of nowhere, Malaysia

01:28 seems to have come out and been close to the forefront, if not at the forefront now. Is

01:32 there confidence at least from the administration that perhaps Tesla will put pen to paper either

01:38 as a regional headquarters or even as setting up a manufacturing hub, perhaps in Malaysia,

01:44 partially at the expense of other countries that want it?

01:46 Well, of course, Malaysia, like any other country in ASEAN, will want to see FDI coming

01:53 to their country. In Malaysia, first quarter, FDI went up by 60% and Tesla is a big name.

01:59 But more importantly to us, it's not really whether it's about Tesla or Intel or Infineon,

02:05 those are companies that recently made headlines in Malaysia, including AWS. It's about the

02:09 spillover impact to a country, right? The reason why we want to attract these companies

02:14 is because they will give spillover effect to the Malaysian companies, the SMEs and the

02:18 Malaysian corporates supplying to this group. Malaysia companies are supplying a lot of

02:24 equipment, a lot of inputs to Tesla, for example, and other cars as well. So they stand to benefit.

02:31 And of course, this will bring up great new jobs, etc. So I think what's important is

02:36 to show that whatever investments that come to a country, for example, to Malaysia, the

02:42 spillover effect is a positive one.

02:44 For more UN videos visit: www.un.org/webcast

02:49 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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