4 - Deepening Public Sector Economic Links

Summary

After Abdullah Badawi became Prime Minister, the leadership in both countries made it a point to send the right signals to the business communities in both the private sector and the public sector with government-linked companies. In his talks with President Nathan in Kuala Lumpur in April 2005, the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak, commented, “Malaysia and Singapore are two countries that have reached respective levels of development… Therefore we should conduct ourselves in a very mature and dignified manner so that we can show that this should be the way to conduct business between the two neighbours. Leveraging on much improved bilateral political ties, many top corporate names from both countries began to establish a series of high-level contacts to explore new business opportunities.

At the invitation of the Kuala Lumpur Business Club (KLBC), a by-invitation-only organization, Ms Ho Ching, Chief Executive of Temasek Holdings, visited Kuala Lumpur in 2004 to deliver a speech at a dinner function. To reciprocate her visit, some of Malaysia's biggest names belonging to the KLBC embarked on a two-day visit to Singapore for a series of high-level meetings in June 2005. The delegation met Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, attended a reception hosted by Temasek Holdings Chief Executive Ho Ching and had a breakfast meeting with Singapore Airlines Chairman Koh Boon Hwee and other private meetings with top Singapore businessmen. The Malaysian delegation, with top officials from Malaysia Airlines, YTL Corporation, CIMB, Genting and RHB, was led by Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Jamaludin Jaris. He said, “It's important for Malaysian and Singaporean business community to touch baseregularly…. High politics may continue to disagree on certain lines but on the ground and in business, there is much that can still go on.”

A seminar on business opportunities in Malaysia attended by some 1,200 businessmen was held in Singapore on 29 August 2005. The highlights of the seminar was the paper delivered by Rafidah Aziz, Malaysian Minister for International Trade and Industry and the other by Singapore Minister for Trade and Industry, Lim Hng Kiang. The two ministers were quite upbeat about the prospects for increasing trade and investment across the Causeway.