Today DRB-HICOM via PROTON and Geely held the Global Investors & Vendors Convention 2023 which showcases investment opportunities at the Proton City in Tanjung Malim. The location will be renamed as the Automotive High Tech Valley and will be a place where both Malaysian and Chinese vendors can come, set up shop and develop cars especially for those new energy vehicles (NxGV), whether battery electric or other ways and also as a hub for Geely to test and tropicalise their vehicles for the equatorial (and harsh climate regions). The innaugural event saw over 200 participants including government agency officials, Malaysian vendors and 42 automotive suppliers from China.
The convention follows the signing of a Heads of Agreement (HOA) on 1 April 2023 between DRB- HICOM and Geely in Beijing to develop the Automotive High Tech Valley (AHTV. Now both parties have taken another step towards the fulfilment of their commitment to building Malaysia’s future hub for Next Generation Vehicles (NxGV) in Tanjung Malim. The Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry, YB Senator Tengku Datuk Seri Utama Zafrul Bin Tengku Abdul Aziz was the guest of honour and delivered a keynote address.
Aside from providing a platform for potential overseas investors to meet relevant government agencies as well as potential partners from the local vendor community, the conference also showcased the progress made at the project site, the availability of government incentives and prospects for companies setting up new business at the AHTV, which is projected to eventually become an integrated automotive city.
It is envisioned that when fully realised, AHTV will be a centre for globally recognised tropical based research and development of high technology automotive components that will include a research university aimed at expanding the capabilities of Malaysian automotive workers and helping the country become a regional leader in education for automotive engineering, information technology, artificial intelligence, and software development.
“The Global Investors & Vendors Convention 2023 is one of DRB-HICOM and Geely’s efforts to attract overseas investment in to AHTV and the country and together, we target to attract some RM32 billion worth of investments towards the project, including what has already been earmarked by PROTON. As the shift to New Energy Vehicles gathers pace AHTV will embrace the changing automotive landscape by offering an integrated ecosystem that will help Malaysia’s automotive sector in line with the direction of the National Automotive Policy (“NAP”) 2020, thus ensuring the country continues as vibrant as its neighbours.
“Concurrently, our combined efforts as well as the strong interest shown by vendors from China will help attract support for the project from the Chinese government, which can lead to even more investments propelled in to AHTV and Malaysia. Geely’s collaboration with PROTON and their support for the project has already resulted in several investors and component suppliers operating in Tanjung Malim, and their existing high technology ecosystem is sure to play a major role in bringing the project forwards,” said Syed Faisal Albar, Group Managing Director, DRB-HICOM, and Chairman of PROTON.
Having operated its production plant in Tanjung Malim for the last 20 years, national carmaker PROTON stands to gain from the development of the automotive hub by leveraging on the presence of high technology suppliers at AHTV. The company however will also bring additional benefits to the surrounding area when it fully relocates its manufacturing and research and design facilities there by 2026.
It is of our opinion that this is a very good move by both DRB-HICOM and Geely as firstly, I believe that Proton City has been underutilised. Now with the push to market the area for local and overseas vendors, as with the purpose as a tropicalisation research hub for making Geely vehicles better for equatorial and harsh climate countries it adds to the area being used as a right-hand drive conversion hub for Geely vehicles.
The brands under Geely's umbrella are many and include Lotus, Volvo cars and more. So if one thinks that only Proton and Geely cars will be designed or researched here, they could be mistaken as there are many brands that Geely has and can utilise AHTV once it is fully up and running.
Of course, the vendors and individual brands must be persuaded firstly. The initial idea is indeed very good and if it goes well, it will be very favourable for Malaysia as a whole. I believe even the government seems keen on the idea which was proposed during the Prime Minister's trip to China recently and Tengku Datuk Seri Utama Zafrul also stated that MITI would be pushing hard on this agenda as well as improving the ease of doing business in Malaysia to attract more foreign investments by making the process easier with more tax and financial incentives for foreign companies to start up here.
The forum today also had a speaker from MITI's department of MIDA informing the Chinese delegate of MIDA's Chinese investment desk here at the MIDA building in KL as well as their offices located in China. Aside from that, I think the folks at MITI find the data like the one below quite interesting, where Malaysia has the 5th largest container handling tonnage globally and the fact that Malaysia also ranks 12th in the world in terms of the ease of doing business, yet translating it to actual foreign investments seem to be a little bit tough compared to other countries in the ASEAN region. It is indeed perplexing come to think about it and from seeing the Malaysian government's participation here. Maybe there is something other than just statistics at play here.
No comments:
Post a Comment