KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia remains a key gateway for investments from international firms to enter the region, said Deloitte Malaysia during its annual TaxMax Conference 2016 yesterday.
Themed ‘Brave decisions, Brave Actions’, the seminar provided an in-depth analysis on Budget 2017 and discussed how businesses can leverage on recent tax and economic developments to maximize the opportunities and embark on the right steps under current economic conditions.
The key highlight of the seminar was the Economic Forum which discussed the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) and the enhanced diplomatic relationship between China and Malaysia which gives rise to multiple bilateral trades and investments opportunities.
Other headlines of the seminar included corporate and personal income tax, changes to the Companies Act and its implications on the corporate tax regime, the Tax Amnesty programme and the GST tribunal.
Deloitte Malaysia country tax leader Yee Wing Peng led the Economic Forum with a comprehensive discussion on the importance of Malaysia joining the TPPA, its impact to foreign direct investment (FDI) and domestic direct investment (DDI), and the challenges and opportunities local businesses will face.
When the TPPA comes into force, there will be allocation of government procurement for Bumiputera vendors. However, a large proportion of the tenders will be opened to all local and international vendors.
Director of Ministry of International Trade’s (MITI) division of Strategic Negotiations, Syahril Syazli Ghazali shared that the Government has rolled out several initiatives to help local businesses to prepare themselves for the opportunities.
As of March 2016, the Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation (Matrade) has organised 150 export production programmes for SMEs. MITI has also been working closely with the SMECorp to assist SMEs with branding, labelling, packaging and capacity building.
Yee opined that compared to other Asean countries, Malaysia is a competitive location for shared-service centres as the nation has a good pool of talent and infrastructure. The softening Ringgit against the major currencies in the region has made Malaysia more compelling as a regional service hub.
Additionally, Malaysia is well-positioned to embrace more Chinese investments. Business and language proficiencies inherent within Malaysians provides the ease of doing business with China players and establishes high chances to attract Chinese MNCs to set up their regional service centres in Malaysia.
Notably, there are several large Chinese multinational developers already embarking on mega mixed development in Malaysia. These developers can play a leading role in bringing in more Chinese MNCs to operate in the facilities they will set up.
Some of these major Chinese development projects in West Malaysia include the Bandar Malaysia (486 acres), the Melaka Gateway (600 acres), the Malaysia-China Kuantan Industrial Park (1500 acres), and Forest City in Johor Bahru (3425 acres).
