Kuala Lumpur-July 13,2017-A high-powered finance forum was held by Tsinghua University PBC School of Finance (PBCSF for short), one of the best finance schools in China.
This Forum, themed as ‘Opportunities for Malaysia and China entrepreneurs under the Belt and Road Initiative’, is part of the second module of the newly launched Belt & Road Finance EMBA Program for Southeast Asia by PBCSF.
Tengku Dato’ Sri Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz, Chief Executive Officer of CIMB Group host the forum, which addressed an audience comprising of the heads of corporations from eight countries.
He said, “The Belt and Road initiative’s socio-economic aspiration is to connect 65% of the global population generating one third of the world’s GDP, providing opportunities for trade and infrastructure that will also spur innovation and foster smart partnerships. Through cooperation and a focus on win-win solutions, the Belt and Road initiative will not only strengthen ASEAN’s role as a hub connecting the East and West, but also pave the way for Asia to play a stronger leadership role in ensuring a global agenda that is more inclusive of Asia and more cognizant of its peoples’ values and aspirations.”
During his keynotespeech, Datuk Seri Ir. Dr. Wee Ka Siong, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, said, “China has continued to be the largest trading partner with Malaysia forthe eighth consecutive year since 2009. Our trade with China hasincreased by 32.3 percent to RM25.21 billion, accounting for 16.4 percentof our total trade.”
“We need more however, to sustain these growth figures into the future. Itmight be a lot more difficult without the right infrastructure development which Malaysia is actively pursuing with the help of local and international smart partnerships. It is here that we must remember that China views Malaysia as a major long-term partner with its confidence toco-invest here with a huge range of infrastructure projects that aims toachieve major cascading economic breakthrough into the future”, said Datuk Seri Ir. Dr. Wee Ka Siong.
Tan Sri Dato’ Dr Michael Yeoh, Co-Founder and CEO of The Asian Strategy & Leadership Institute, said, “The Belt and Road initiative is a great framework for the benefit of 65 countries involved. ASEAN countries will benefit from energy, green energy, environment, education and engineering under theinitiative, especially in a more transparent, open and well-developed capital market.”
While there was a general consensus from the discussion that the Belt and Road Initiative could be the next growth catalystfor ASEAN, challenges were also addressed. These include the different development rates of various ASEAN countries, equitable financing for less developed countries and ensuring inclusive development for all. One of the highlights of the Forum was a panel discussion by industrial leaders from China and Malaysia, includingTan Sri Francis Yeoh Sock Ping, Group Managing Director of YTL Corporation; Zhu Jianmin, Vice President of Country Garden Holdings; Song Juntao, eWTP Project Leader of Alibaba Group and Ju Jiandong, Professor of Tsinghua University PBCSF.Chee Choon Wee, Managing Director of Head of Investment Banking Asia, moderated the panel discussion.
Tan Sri Francis Yeoh took over his father’s company in 1988 and grew it into a multi-disciplinary conglomerate comprising of five listed entities. He illustrated with figures, “Developing Asia needs to invest US$1.5 trillion a year till 2030 to maintain growth, eradicate poverty and respond to climate change. The funding gap is estimated to be US$1 trillion a year by 2020. 60% of such funding gap will be in countries without or speculative investment grade. The internationalization of RMB will present an ideal opportunity to fill this gap.The development of offshore RMB bond markets in Hong Kong with bond tenures a long as 50-100 years will be most conducive to the goals of the Belt and Road Initiative.”
Zhu Jianmin, introduced the Forest City, which is a new property project located in Iskandar Malaysia with a planned area of 20 square kilometers. The Forest City has joined hands with around 140 Chinese manufacturing companies to actively participate in the Belt and Road initiative and international production capacity cooperation with the accumulated contract volume of 1.9 billion RM, which further consolidated the ties between Malaysia and China in terms of politics, economy and cultural exchange.
Song Juntao,shared Alibaba’s commercial exploration under the Belt and Road initiative. Alibaba and MY launched the first eWTP pilot outside of China in March, wish to build up an e-road which could provide a one-stop service for all SMEs and consumers to buy globally, sell globally, pay globally, travel globally and deliver globally.eWTP shares the same vision as Belt and Road initiative, which is to create a more open, free and fair trade environment. While eWTP is also unique as it is driven by private sectors and focused on information technology and innovation.
Professor Ju Jiandong at lastbrought up his opinion that both China and Malaysia face challenges to maintain strong growth and high trade volume in current global structure change. The Belt and Road initiative provides ‘soft infrastructure framework’ which enables the countries within the region to enjoy ‘deep integration’ while maintain varieties in politic regime, market system and culture acknowledgement. Professor Ju also proposed his simple three principles to develop B&R initiative: zero tariff, equal investment opportunitiesand most convenient money.
Before the Forum, The First Classof Belt & Road Finance EMBA Program for Southeast Asia by PBCSF visited representative enterprises of Malaysia from July 12-July 13, including CIMB Group, Maxis invested by Usaha Tegas Sdn. Bhd, Grab, YTL Corporation and AirAsia Berhad.
