Bahasa Melayu (official), English, Chinese (various dialects), Tamil and indigenous

RELIGIONS Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and others

ECONOMY Oil-related revenue is 21.5 per cent (target is 15.5 per cent by 2020)

between both countries through the Causeway and Second Link bridges is estimated at 4,00,000 crossings both ways daily.

But with a proposed travel time of only 90 minutes, the rail link would open up all sorts of opportunities, and not just for people looking to take advantage of the wage rates in Singapore, which are more than 250 per cent higher than in Kuala Lumpur. And then there’s the matter of freight, which could be transferred by train rather than by air.

Collingridge says that KL is an inexpensive place for companies to set up operations, but Malaysia’s advantage is more about the skills it can offer. “A lot of electronic businesses that first went to China have come here,” he says. “China may be cheaper in the middle and the north, but the logistics of that means it’s not viable. If you want value-added electronics then Malaysia is the place. All of Dyson’s global production comes out of here, for instance. This is a regional centre, so if you want China you go to China, but if you are looking at elsewhere in the region, then Malaysia has a very good sell.”

InvestKL has had plenty of success in encouraging multinationals to relocate to Malaysia, says Saw, including Japan’s Hitachi Systems, German industrial gases, engineering company Linde, the UK’s Rentokil Initial, Zurich Insurance, US food giant Cargill and the world’s largest oilfield service company, Schlumberger.

“Business speaks with its feet,” Collingridge says. “If it likes what it sees, it comes in. If not, it goes somewhere else. Dyson and British Telecom have both increased their size in the past two or three years, and also the Weir Group [engineering] and Petrofac [oilfield services].”

Zainal Amanshah, chief executive of InvestKL, points out: “It takes only four to six hours to reach key Asian business centres such as Hong Kong, Shanghai and Tokyo.” He adds that the greater Kuala Lumpur area is fast becoming the regional ASEAN financial centre, with many local and foreign banks choosing to base their local headquarters here.

The Malaysian government’s goal is to get the whole population earning at least US$15,000 a year by 2020. In Kuala Lumpur, that average has probably been achieved, but the greater KL region of more than seven million has a way to go (the population of the country is more than 30 million).

In the meantime, the government has continued moves to reform the tax base and has introduced a general sales tax of six per cent.

Tourism plays an important part in improving wages. Chong Yoke Har, deputy director-general of planning at Tourism Malaysia, says the country hopes to generate RM168 billion ($42 billion) from 36 million tourist arrivals by 2020.

In 2014, Malaysia received 27.4 million visitors (an increase of 6.7 per cent on 2013), with the majority coming from Singapore, Indonesia, China, Thailand, Brunei, India, Philippines, Australia and Japan. This equated to RM72 billion ($18 billion) in receipts, making tourism its second-largest foreign exchange earner.

Outside of the Asia-Pacific region, the European market (particularly the UK, Germany, France and Italy), together with the US and the Middle East (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait) contributed more than 1.2 million visitors in 2014, which is a ten per cent increase on 2013.

In terms of accommodation, YTL Hotels owns some 20 properties in Malaysia, including the Majestic in Kuala Lumpur, which dates back to 1932. The company is part of the larger Malaysian conglomerate YTL, which has interests in everything from utilities to rail (it built the KLIA Ekspres infrastructure). Mark Yeoh, executive director of YTA’s hotels division, says the country is doing well at attracting both business and leisure visitors, and that repeat visitors are high.

Hotel prices in Kuala Lumpur are a significant attraction, with the city ranking 113th in Mercer’s Cost of Living Survey 2015, well below Hong Kong and Singapore, which ranked second- and fourthmost expensive respectively. This final advantage means it needn’t cost the earth to visit Kuala Lumpur on an exploratory trip. And once there, its attractions quickly mount up – now even more easily reached thanks to the new transport links.