Malaysia Confident Of Being Able To Breeze Through Strong Headwinds - Najib

From Nor Baizura Basri

DAVOS (Switzerland), Jan 22 (Bernama) -- Malaysia is confident of being able to breeze through the strong global headwinds following the country's strong economic fundamentals, says Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

Najib raised his concerns on the current falling global oil prices and believed the pre-emptive measures announced recently were a reality check.

"Of course, we are concerned with the headwinds but we believe in strong fundamentals.

"The market will make its correction and in due course, we will overcome strong headwinds and we will be back on track," he said in a keynote address at a business luncheon on the sidelines of the 45th World Economic Forum held here.

Najib, who is also the finance minister, said apart from these measures, having a diversified economy as well as continuing to be more competitive, did help in going through these economic turbulences.

For the past five years, Malaysia has a "good run" in terms of economic performance including hitting an all-time high in stock market as well as raking in the highest foreign direct investments in history in 2013, Najib said.

"In short, Malaysia is still a good story to tell and I hope you are equally convince about it.

"So, welcome to Malaysia and I am hoping you (investors) will be our partners and believe in Malaysia's story," he said.

Apart from that, Malaysia's location at the heart of Asia offered tremendous growth potential for the world as well as its other nine-member of Asean grouping, he said.

"Asean will be a major force to be considered and within Asean at the heart of Asean, lies Malaysia," he said.

Najib said by declaring Asean as an economic community this year, it meant there would be more movements towards reducing most of the tariffs, working towards a single market and a single production base.

"Asean is home to more than 620 million people and will have a combined gross domestic product of US$4 trillion by 2020," he said.

The business luncheon was hosted by Khazanah Nasional Bhd, Malaysian Investment Development Authority and InvestKL.

About 55 top global industry honchos as well as 39 local industry captains attended the event including Royal Vopak, Barclays, Huawei, LaFarge, Novartis and many more.

Local captains of industry include Permodalan Nasional Bhd President and Chief Executive Officer Tan Sri Hamad Kama Piah Che Othman, Axiata President and Group Chief Executive Officer Datuk Seri Jamaludin Ibrahim and UEM Group Chairman Tan Sri Dr Ahmad Tajuddin Ali.