Malaysia to host Global Offset and Countertrade Conference
KUALA LUMPUR: Kuala Lumpur will host the Global Offset and Countertrade Association Asia-Pacific Conference 2017 (GOCA APAC 2017) from March 26 to 29 to promote trade and commerce among companies and their foreign customers through a greater understanding of countertrade and offset.
Technology Depository Agency Bhd (TDA) Chief Executive Officer Datuk Zailani Safari said Malaysia was chosen as the host based on its achievement in implementing the Industrial Collaboration Programme (ICP).
He said it was an honour for Malaysia to be the first Asia-Pacific nation to host GOCA APAC as it was normally held in European countries and the US.
“GOCA feels that Malaysia’s ICP procedure can be used as an example by countries practitising ICP to optimise economic returns,” he said after an interview on Radio Bernama yesterday.
(Countertrade is defined as international trade by exchange of goods, while offsets are industrial and/or commercial arrangements under which foreign suppliers implement specific projects that benefit the procuring country and are aimed to partially or fully offset the country’s procurement costs).
The conference is also open to the public besides industry players and government officials, comprising policy and decision makers.
So far, it has attracted over 180 participants from European countries, the US, the Middle East, India, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Zailani said the conference would help enlighten industry players on the need to tailor their business structure to meet government’s aspirations besides optimising business procedures through offset to increase their earnings.
On the role of TDA, he said it is an agency under the Ministry of Finance mandated to manage, administer and monitor all ICP programmes in accordance with the processes set by government policies issued through the ministry.
He said the ICP strategic goal was to ensure that the nation’s procurement involving supplies, works and services, were capitalised effectively with resolve to support industrial growth and technological development needs.
Zailani said the main objective of ICP was to ensure that every ringgit spent by the government for procurement would add value.
“ICP will be carried out if there were government procurement exceeding the limits set, which applied onto procurement from foreign suppliers worth more than RM50 million, and procurement from local companies worth more than RM100 million,” he added.
Since 2011 until today, he said TDA had been managing 70 ICP programmes worth RM70 billion which were placed under surveillance until 2020.
He said according to the mandatory, the procurement value to economic achievement was 1:1, but there were also programmes that had been closed, which were made with procurements of RM1 billion that had recorded multiple economic returns of RM4 billion.
TDA will continue to ensure value for money in all areas of government expenditure in buying strategic assets such as military, public or commercial assets in order to get optimum returns, economic benefits and fulfill its vision, he said. — Bernama