An insider’s view of foreign investment in Malaysia

KUMAR, a soft-spoken Indian man in his late forties, is a senior manager with a large American manufacturing firm. He has spent eight years trying to set up a multimillion dollar plant in Malaysia.

Kumar was at an airport, in the middle of a long wait for a taxi to get to the city. As Americans do, he began chatting. He explained his frustration with doing business with one of Malaysia’s top multinational corporations.

“When we hold meetings in the States,” he mused, “we go through things as fast as we can. Here, the meetings drag on all day.

“In fact, when I walked into my first meeting here, I was completely ignored by the execs standing around, because I looked Indian.

“So I walked up to the white board, picked up a marker pen, and I wrote my name, my responsibilities, and then I wrote ‘Yes, I am Indian by birth, and I am an American citizen.’ Then they were nice to me.

“By ten in the morning, the meeting broke up for tea. Then there was a lunch break. In the afternoon, there was another tea break. Later on, I imposed a rule that meetings had to be completed within fifteen minutes.

“My boss came to Malaysia two years ago, and on our way back home, he said the Malaysians were very polite and the meeting had gone well. But six months later, the actions we’d agreed on during the meeting had not been carried out. I was told there was a delay because of the fasting month.

“My boss was so angry that he vowed he would never return to Malaysia, so I’m continuing the negotiations myself. There are ten to fifteen local engineers working on the plant at any one time, but every decision, no matter how trivial, is referred to us in the States. The general feeling seems to be that it is the Americans’ plant, and there is no sense of ownership.

“If things don’t work out in Malaysia, we have another site available for the plant in another Asian country, and we’re ready to move our production there at any time. If I can’t get things sorted out this trip, I’m pulling the plug and we’re going to set up there.

“Eight years ago we met with Mahathir for two minutes,” he recalled. “He was an impressive man, and we were very encouraged by his recommendations. One of his ministers instructed us to set up our plant at a particular site, so we did. But it’s been slow going ever since.”

Kumar expressed frank doubts about the effectiveness of affirmative action in Malaysia. “There are similarities to the quota system for lower-caste undergraduates in India,” he explained. “There, even the very brightest students compete for only ten percent of the places.

“My wife was very talented, but she couldn’t get into specialist training in India, because she was from a higher caste,” he explained. “I was going to the States for my engineering degree, so she came with me, and she got into training there. Now she’s a paediatrician, and the director of a large hospital in the States.

“I find it hard to believe there are talented young graduates still willing to work in Malaysia,” he frowned. “To be honest with you, I can’t see Malaysia growing in the next 25 years, even though there’s not likely to be starvation here.”

“There’s another thing I’m not used to here: I can’t get over the racism,” he went on. “One time, I flew in on a night flight in business class. When I was approaching the immigration counter, the officer there insisted I had to queue up in a long line of Indian migrant workers waiting for work permits. I showed the immigration people my US passport, and told them I’d been visiting Malaysia for years, and then they let me through.

“There was another time I got into a cab downtown and the driver asked me whether I was from India. I said ‘yes’, instead of saying I’m an American citizen, just to find out what response I’d get.

“I was taken aback when the driver started condemning Indians in Malaysia, and didn’t stop, for the entire 15-minute ride. I never knew there could be so many complaints and so much anger packed into such a short cab ride.

“In the States, people don’t show this kind of animosity. If you have some kind of ability, you can make progress in your career,” he said.

“But on the other hand, Malaysians are very hospitable to Caucasians,” he smiled. — Hornbill Unleashed