PETALING JAYA: Finance minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz has been criticised by business leaders after he made a posting about the level of foreign investment in Malaysia last year and investors’ confidence in the country.
He had argued in a posting on the professional social media platform LinkedIn that foreign and domestic investment in Malaysia had amounted to RM109.8 billion for the first nine months of 2020.
“How’s that for investors’ continued confidence in Malaysia?” he said.
However, Sven Schneider, chief executive of the European Chamber of Commerce, said in response to Tengku Zafrul’s post that European foreign investors have many concerns about Malaysia being a “viable investment destination”.
“Until today, the Honorable Minister was not even able to meet with us and listen to the concerns of our corporations,” Schnieder said. “Without these inputs, your Ministry certainly cannot address the problems on the ground.”
Tengku Zafrul’s figures were also questioned by the chief executive of a Kuala Lumpur-based online shopping and e-commerce site.
Christian Angell Isaksen of Collectr Sdn Bhd said: “I don’t see how close to RM1.6 billion in investments yielding 1,800 jobs is great. That basically means the cost of each job is close to RM900,000.”
He said he hoped Malaysia would start focusing more on tech investments and incentives to attract new start-ups and keep the existing ones. “The way it is now I’m afraid Malaysia will lose out to every other country in Southeast Asia.”
Tengku Zafrul had said that investments in 2020 involved close to 3,000 projects in the manufacturing, services and primary sectors.
He said the Penjana Kapital scheme had facilitated investment from eight international venture capital fund managers for RM1.57 billion into Malaysian start-ups for fintech, edutech, agritech, mobility and Artificial Intelligence, which he claimed would create 1,800 jobs. - FMT
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