Malaysia serious about their multimedia super corridor

22nd July 1996

If you want something enough, put your top man on it.

Prime Minister of Malaysia Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohomad is investing himself personally in Malaysia's quest to be the centre for IT in Asia in the Asia Pacific Century. Not content with personally visiting Bill Gates himself and extracting various extremely significant commitments to his "multimedia super corridor" he is now wooing Japanese companies to become involved in a project sponsored by the Japanese group NTT, that stretches from Kuala Lumpur's KLCC building (the highest in the world even though rumors persist it is leaning..!), to the new administrative complex at Putrajaya to the new International airport at Sepang.

The recent pull out from Penang of Texas Instruments who are moving away from disk drive production is more to do with HP product strategy that disaffection for Malaysia.

Proving that he is a man of action as well as words, tiger economies that initially underestimated Malaysia's ability to fulfill this role are now looking askance at Mahathir's personal success.

Most Asian countries in the last 5 years, faced with declining competitiveness in manufacturing, labour shortages and the cost of labour, have looked to becoming the region's IT centre as a way out of economic telling points fast approaching. It has been acknowledged by many that IT ventures cluster together (Silicon Valley being the best example of course. Malaysia is a front runner for this prize.