Penang CM for more business tie-up with India

Chennai, Mar 6 (UNI) Malaysia's Penang Chief Minister Koh Tsu Koon today reiterated that both India and Malaysia should take advantage of their competitive strengths to offer productive and cost competition in the business tie-ups.

Delivering a keynote address at the meeting organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here, Dr Koon said the State of Penang, a leading industrial State of Malaysia, was moving up the value chain, focusing on high-mix and low volume development of hardware products, while forging partnerships with emerging manufacturing destinations such as India and China for mass production.

"The State follows pro-active policies in forming partnerships with the emerging hardware manufacturing destinations", he added.

Dr Koon said Penang has built a strong manufacturing base, as well as a robust infrastructure for supply chain management.

"For instance, Dell's Penang facility produces over 95 per cent of Dell Laptops that were sold in the North American market", he said adding "the highlight is that Penang supplies the custom-built laptops at the doorsteps of the North American customers within four days of placing the order." He said though the population of Penang is 1.5 million, it houses a large number of leading Multinational hardware manufacturing companies, including Intel, HP, Dell and Hitachi in the world.

The Chief Minister also mentioned that the entry of Multinational companies had also created a strong domestic supplier base, comprising small and medium enterprises.

"Today, the country is renowned for its sophisticated precision engineering and automation industry. Penang has become a major centre for manufacturing automation", he added.

UNI