Malaysia’s Forest City off limits to foreigners
MALAYSIAN Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad yesterday declared that foreigners will not be granted visas to live in the giant Forest City real estate project on the country’s southern tip, a major threat to the marketing strategy for the development.
It is not his first broadside against the plan by Chinese developer Country Garden Holdings Co to create a new city that was envisaged to eventually house 700,000 people on reclaimed land near Singapore, but it could be his most damaging. The company has been targeting foreigners more than Malaysians for sales of the apartments.
A top official at the project told Reuters last week that in the weeks immediately after 93-year-old Mahathir came back to power, through a shock election victory in May, demand for the apartments had weakened, and that the uncertainty remained a concern.
Mahathir’s latest comments are likely to exacerbate those concerns.
“One thing is certain, that city that is going to be built cannot be sold to foreigners,” Mahathir said at a news conference yesterday in Kuala Lumpur in response to a question from Reuters. “We are not going to give visas for people to come and live here.”
Mahathir, who was prime minister from 1981-2003, said the government’s objection was “because it was built for foreigners, not built for Malaysians. Most Malaysians are unable to buy those flats.”
Country Garden Pacificview Sdn Bhd, the joint venture between Country Garden and the Johor state government that is developing Forest City, said in a statement it is in touch with Mahathir’s office as it seeks clarification. It said it believed Mahathir’s comments “may have been taken out of context in certain media reports” as they do not correspond with the content of a meeting between the prime minister and Country Garden Holdings Chairman Yeung Kwok Keung.
In that August 16 meeting, Mahathir “reiterated that he welcomes foreign investments which could create employment opportunities, promote technology transfer and innovations that could benefit Malaysia’s economic growth and job creation,” Country Garden Pacificview said.