Malaysia’s Tech Ecosystem to Help Woo Top Brands, Zafrul Says

Ravil Shirodkar, Bloomberg News

Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz, Malaysia's international trade and industry minister, speaks during the Invest Malaysia Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Wednesday, March 8, 2023. The conference runs through today. Photographer: Samsul Said/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Malaysia is counting on its well-established ecosystem and talent pool in the electrical and electronics space to win investments amid competition from peers in Southeast Asia, according to Trade Minister Zafrul Aziz.

He was making a case for building on strengths that make the country stand out to investors, rather than relying only on incentives to attract businesses as he said financial giveaways can easily be matched by others.

Zafrul’s comments at an investor conference in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday follow Malaysia’s recent success in attracting top brands such as Tesla Inc. and Amazon Web Services. While Tesla plans to import its EVs into the Southeast Asian nation and build a network of superchargers, AWS will invest 25.5 billion ($6 billion) in cloud-computing infrastructure by 2037.

Tesla chose Malaysia as the country has a proven ecosystem to support the company, built over the past 50 years, Zafrul said. Few know that companies in this space already provide services of more than 200 million ringgit to Tesla, he added.

Zafrul said Tesla will be working very closely with small- and medium-sized enterprises locally as it goes about building its supercharger network.

The minister had previously said that the planned investments are expected to create high-quality job opportunities and further lift Malaysia’s outlook.