‘No blanket ban on China investments’
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia will not impose a blanket ban on all foreign investments from China, but will say “no” to “irresponsible foreign investments and dubious loans that can ruin economies”.
Council of Eminent Persons member Prof Jomo Kwame Sundaram said since the country’s independence in 1957, Malaysian governments had invited foreign direct investments.
Caricaturing the country’s political debate over investments from China, he said, risked misleading all concerned.
He said Malaysia would take a shrewder view on investments from China.
He was responding to an article in London-based Financial Times on May 16 that suggested the new Malaysian government would be “antagonistic” to investments from China.
In his letter to the editor, which appeared in the paper’s May 23 issue, Jomo said this misrepresented the popular Malaysian rejection of the kleptocracy that ruled the country in the last decade.
He said opposition to projects like the RM67 billion East Coast Rail Link project did not constitute a blanket opposition to all investments from China.
He said the project garnered much public opposition for its associated debt liabilities.
“The previous government awarded the project to a Chinese company without any competitive, let alone transparent, process, with various special privileges, including tax exemptions.”
Despite consultants’ advice, Jomo said, the project was expedited to start this year and scheduled to be completed in seven years instead of the recommended 18.
He said barely four months later, about a quarter of the total loan had been disbursed.
He said although many lumped investments from China together, “the new Malaysian government is much more discriminating and recognises that foreign direct investments and technology transfers from abroad will be crucial to future progress”.
He said given Prime Minister Tun Mahathir Mohamad’s commitment to accelerating the country’s technological progress, the new government favoured productive industrial investments.
These include 5G telecommunications, useful artificial intelligence applications, financial technologies, renewable energy, new medicines and electric vehicles.