MSC is here to stay, says foreign university don
Dr Jason P Abbott said this was clear from previous mega-projects devised and championed by the Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
Abbot presented a paper entitled 'Bridging the Digital Divide?' at the Malaysian Studies Conference held at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) yesterday.
"Already a whole series of government sponsored initiatives have been launched within the MSC to support it," said Abbott, citing the Entertainment Village or E-Village as an example.
(The E-Village project was initiated with the aim of turning Malaysia into the regional hub for the film making industry)
"Love him or hate him, Mahathir remains determined to catapult Malaysia into the knowledge economy whatever the financial cost to the Malaysian tax-payer and whatever the competition (domestic or external) he faces," said Abbot.
Fierce competition
The tragedy for MSC was that Malaysia had a distinct advantage which eroded through a combination of exogenous events such as the economic crisis, domestic responses to those events and domestic political difficulties, he added.
"Now the field is much more open and the competition for investment funds for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) projects are increasingly fierce."
Abbot added that markets for offshore finance centers or export processing zones such as Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand, face a danger of competitive outbidding.
"And in this competition, it is not just the regulatory environment that matters," he said.
The three day conference with the theme 'Malaysia in Transformation: Problems and Challenges' was organised by the Malaysian Social Sciences Association, in collaboration with UKM's Institute of Malaysian and International Studies and Institute of the Malay World and Civilization.
The topics covered at the conference include government and politics, labour, immigration and management, women and development, science and technology, environment and society, education and health, international relations, globalisation and culture, language and literature.
The conference draws to an end today.
