Malaysia ketinggalan dalam perlumbaan IT dengan Singapura. Banyak syarikat IT dunia seperti Microsoft dan Cisco berpengkalan di Singapura atau mempunyai lebih ramai pekerja di sana. Malah ada yang berhijrah dari MSC Malaysia ke Singapura kerana tertarik dengan pelbagai kemudahannya. Padahal negara Singapura lebih sedikit penduduk dan pelepasan cukainya tidaklah sebanyak mana. Puncanya adalah kerana ia mesra-manusia dan mampu mengubah diri untuk mengikut selera pekerja dan syarikat IT. Inilah kunci kejayaan Singapura dan unit ekonominya amat agresif memasarkan negara.

Hanya sedikit (kurang 50%) syarikat bertaraf MSC berpindah ke MSC. Microsoft dan Oracle mengekalkan ramai pekerja di KL kerana ia lebih hampir kepada pelanggan. Yang menariknya fokus Microsoft di sini cuma bidang latihan dan pencegahan cetak rompak sahaja. Mungkin tiada langsung Unit R&D Microsoft di sini. Mungkin itu sebabnya Bill Gates asyik terlewat sampai ketika panel MSC bermesyuarat kerana tumpuan di tempat lain lebih mustahak.

Di Kuala Lumpur hanya KLCC bertaraf MSC - bukannya semua. Walaupun ada 464 syarikat layak, hanya 182 sudah berpindah. Cuma 69 buah syarikat sudah berpindah ke Cyberjaya, 35 buah termasuk Bloomberg LP berada di KLCC dan selebihnya 78 lagi berada di sudut utara MSC. Masalah kos menyewa, logistik atau lokasi berjauhan adalah antara punca mereka memilih untuk tidak berpindah.

Ini berbeda dengan Suntec City Singapura, di mana terdapat kompleks beli-belah, pusat persidangan, kafe berinternet, pawagam dan laluan tren/LRT bawah tanah yang mudah dan cepat. KLCC mungkinm serupa tetapi ia tidak mampu disewa oleh syarkat IT yang kecil-kecil.

Menurut pengarah Sun Microsystem Malaysia, teknologi berwayar fiber-optik MSC yang dipasang 3 tahun sudah itu kini terpupus dengan perkembangan teknologi tanpa wayar (wireless) yang amat memesat sekarang. Ini bermakna kerajaan dan Telekom mungkin perlu berbelanja mega lagi untuk menarik pelanggan sedangkan talian fiber yang ada masih lengang kekurangan data (dan tentunya wang) lalu lalang. Nampaknya Malaysia tidak akan terkejar kerana degil untuk belajar dari kesilapan. Pelaburan MSC dan Telekom mungkin berakhir dalam rugi yang berpanjangan kerana tidak ada orang secukupnya yang menggunakan kemudahan.

-Terjemahan Ringkas Kapal Berita-

(P/S: Semalam Telekom dan Tenaga mengetuai syarikat yang dihempap malang di BSKL akibat kebimbangan paparan baru MSCI yang lebih mengambil-kira peratus saham yang boleh diurusniaga atau terapung bebas. Selain itu ada lain-lain keresahan juga termasuk pelaburan mereka berdua.)

5/17/01 7:03 PM

Bloomberg News

(Published in the June issue of Bloomberg Markets.)

SINGGAPORE BEATS MALAYSIA IN BATTLE FOR TECHNOLOGY INVESTORS

Kuala Lumpur May 18 (Bloomberg) -- In 1996, Bill Gates said he was thinking of moving Microsoft Corp.'s Asia-Pacific headquarters to a technology park that Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad planned to carve out of the jungles of Malaysia.

Five years later, just seven Microsoft workers toil in a three-room office in the unfinished area, which is known as the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC).

Bulldozers rumble along dirt roads, and the lack of restaurants means bringing lunch is practically the only option for office workers.

''They say we will get a McDonald's later this year,'' office director Salwana Ali says hopefully.

What of Microsoft's Southeast Asia headquarters? It's in Singapore, where 110 employees work in a cluster of skyscrapers that house 180 technology and financial companies. The buildings, dubbed Suntec City, include a bustling hopping mall, a convention center, Internet cafes, a movie theater and a sub way connection.

Singapore and Malaysia-political and business rivals ever since Malaysia ejected Singapore from its federation in 1965-are slugging it out again. This time the arena is a virtual one: Both states are offering tax breaks and other incentives to foreign technology companies that locate there. The Southeast Asian nations want to transform themselves from low-cost manufacturing centers into economies that produce technological innovation.

So far, Singapore, with 4 million people and a $21,484 gross domestic product per capita, is winning. Though Singapore has a population that's less than one-fifth of Malaysia's and though its Economic Development Board is offering less attractive tax breaks, many investors prefer its educated, English- speaking workforce and its higher quality of life.

Higher Investment

The city-state got $4.1 billion in manufacturing-related foreign investment last year. Malaysia's supercorridor, by contrast, cleared just $1.1 billion n in manufacturing- and technology-related foreign investment, even though it offers investors fast and unlimited immigration, exemption from corporate income tax and other lavish breaks. The supercorridor stretches from Kuala Lumpur's Petronas Twin Towers-the tallest buildings in the world-to the city's new international airport 30 miles south, the largest airport in Asia.

''The MSC,'' Mahathir said in a 1997 speech, ''will be a region with the infrastructure, laws, policies and practices that will enable companies to explore the information age without any of the usual constraints that frustrate them.''

The rivalry between Singapore and Malaysia-with 23 million people and a gross domestic product per capita of $3,480-has become fiercer with the collapse of Internet company stocks and the attendant U.S. economic slowdown. Such products as semiconductors, disk drives and personal computers make up 50 percent of Malaysian and 60 percent of Singaporean exports.

The U.S. is the largest market for both countries, accounting for about 20 percent of these exports. With sales of these products down, fewer U.S. companies are setting up regional offices in Asia.

Both countries have already felt the fallout. Malaysia's electronics exports tumbled to about $4.4 billion in March from $5.8 billion in September 2000, prompting the dismissal of 13,000 electronics workers, according to the government. The Malaysian Trade Union Congress, the country's largest trade union, says that as many as 90,000 more electronics workers could lose their jobs by the end of the year.

Labor Costs

In Singapore, where labor costs are 50 to 70 percent higher than in Malaysia, Member of Parliament and head of the National Trades Union Congress Lim Boon Heng says he expects more than 12,000 workers to lose their jobs this year ar because of reduced electronics exports.

''Diversifying our economy is a key pillar of government policies. If we can't, our economic development won't be as good as we'd like,'' says Ko Kheng Hwa, managing director of Singapore's Economic Development Board.

Singapore would also like to create more homegrown companies. To encourage greater risk taking and entrepreneurship in a population sheltered by decades s of strict government control, the board started a $1 billion venture capital al fund and eased bankruptcy laws so that failed entrepreneurs can in some cases have their debts wiped out.

Singapore is advertising itself in foreign publications as a tech center where ere all of the residential and commercial buildings are wired for broadband and where the standard of living is one of the highest in the region.

''Singapore has done a good job of positioning itself as an island of stability amidst some unpredictable neighbors, and stability is important for foreign companies,'' says Joseph Sweeney, regional research director at Gartner Group Ltd. in Hong Kong.

Singaporean officials have also been wooing some foreign companies away from m Malaysia. BizTone.com, which enables companies to manage finances and sales operations over the Internet, moved its headquarters to Singapore from Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor last year. BizTone made the move after Economic Development Board officials repeatedly approached founder and Chief Executive Darryl Carlton at conferences and offered him reduced taxes and research grants if he made the move.

No Breaks

Carlton, an Australian, complains that the breaks haven't materialized yet.

''I feel like I'm dealing with a typical government bureaucracy that overpromises,'' says Carlton, who moved, along with 20 of his 80 employees. A board spokeswoman declines to comment.

Malaysia is countering with five- to 10-year corporate tax holidays, open immigration for foreign technology workers and the waiving of import duties for companies that move to its technology park.

Prime Minister Mahathir has personally backed the Multimedia Super Corridor in dozens of speeches and trips abroad as a means of creating new technology jobs for Malaysians. His government has poured more than $3.7 billion into the project so far and is expected to spend $10 billion by the time it's completed in 2010. Mahathir said in March that the supercorridor hadn't brought in as much investment as he had hoped and that policies regarding the park need to be reviewed.

Malaysian officials offer a stump speech that sounds much like Singapore's.

''We have a stable economy, a stable political environment, a multilingual population, and we are an ideal gateway to China and India,'' says Ahmad Bakri Shabdin, a vice president at the company that runs the park.

He says Malaysia has an edge over Singapore or Hong Kong because it's integrating technology into everyday life through seven state-ordered programs, such as a paperless government and electronically linked hospitals.

'New Edge'

''We need a government initiative like this to push us to develop a new competitive edge; we can't remain an agricultural society,'' he says. Agricultural exports make up 6.1 percent of the country's total exports and consist mainly of palm oil, timber and rubber.

As the global economy slows, the payoff looks more remote. Song Seng Wun, regional economist with G. K. Goh Holdings Ltd. in Singapore, says Malaysia's unemployment rate could double to 6 percent by the end of the year if layoffs continue at the current pace.

''If our technology policies succeed, our schools would be better and we'd be more ready to adapt to a changing world,'' says Raymond Tang, a Malaysian fund manager at CMS Dresdner Asset Management in Kuala Lumpur. ''Progress of the MSC is critical for all this, but now we are behind.''

A branch of Kuala Lumpur's Multimedia University-opened in the tech park in 1999-has 6,000 students, but so far, only 153 have graduated from the information technology program.

One area of the technology park is on schedule: Putrajaya, the government headquarters and the prime minister's residence. It includes a gleaming office tower with space for 20,000 workers and a pink marble mosque rising from a man-made lake. Prime Minister Mahathir has moved into the residence, as have about 10,000 federal workers.

Mahathir himself may be one of the biggest deterrents to foreign investors in the country he has ruled unchallenged for 20 years. A vocal critic of globalization, he blamed financier George Soros-whom he called a ''rogue trader'' - for the almost 50 percent decline in the ringgit during the 1997-98 Asian currency crisis.

Job Losses

Mahathir has hardly mellowed since then. On Feb. 28, at an international forum in Hainan, China, he proposed a global tax on rich nations to subsidize poor countries, and in a May 1 speech, he complained that globalization is causing job losses in Malaysia.

''If you're a multinational, won't his comments make you think twice about the risks of investing in Malaysia?'' asks author David Ticoll, who runs a Toronto technology research and consulting firm, Digital4sight.

While many companies have signed up for the technology park's tax, duty-free- import and immigration benefits, only a few have moved to the area; just 182 of the 464 businesses approved for the benefits of the park have moved there. Thirty-five companies, including Bloomberg L.P., have moved to the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, which is the sole city location that's officially part of the technology park.

Just 69 companies have moved to Cyberjaya-as the center of the technology park is called-while 78 have moved to the northern part of the park, according to park spokeswoman Rodhiah Ismail.

Among those companies, many are grabbing the tax breaks and then setting up only a token presence in Cyberjaya. Microsoft's seven workers focus mainly on training and copyright protection, while the company maintains a staff of 70 people in downtown Kuala Lumpur.

Oracle Staff

Oracle Corp. plans to move only about five of its 200 Kuala Lumpur-based staff to an incubation center in the park, says Finance Director Steven Tung. The remainder will stay in Kuala Lumpur, where they are closer to Oracle's customers, he says.

Most of the new jobs Mahathir sought to create with the tech park haven't materialized. Nokia Corp., which moved its 200 employees to the technology park from Kuala Lumpur in February, hasn't hired any new staff, says Managing Director Hannu Karavirta. The best part of being in the park, he says, is that Nokia can bring in as many foreign workers as it likes.

NTT MSC Sdn, a subsidiary of Japan's Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. that set up a 100-employee, $25 million regional office in the park, brought most of its senior staff from Japan. ''It's difficult in Asia to find skilled workers, so it is very important to be able to bring in our own workers with out limitations,'' says President and Chief Executive Officer Hotta Akio.

Park officials sometimes unintentionally alienate the big companies they're seeking. ''Without my knowledge, my mobile phone number was put on the Sun listing on the MSC Web site, and I was getting several calls a day from contractors pitching work or from students with inquiries,'' says Govinathan Pillai, managing director of Sun Microsystems Inc. in Malaysia.

Slow Pace

Pillai also worries about the slow pace at which the park is being built. The fiber-optic cabling that was state-of-the-art when it was first installed three years ago looks dated compared with the wireless technology now available, he says.

The scene couldn't be more different in Singapore's Suntec City. Founded in 1995 as an office center and shopping mall, the privately run area is just one of five or six locations in Singapore where technology companies are clustering.

A main attraction of Singapore is simple: money. Stephen Tan, a Malaysian who started magazine subscription service Asiasmart.com in the Kuala Lumpur technology park, says he was happy with the park's benefits but frustrated by a lack of funding. ''I had to move to Singapore because that's where the investors are,'' Tan says.

About $5.5 billion in private venture capital is managed from Singapore, according to the Economic Development Board, versus $500 million from Malaysia, says the Malaysian Venture Capital Association.

Singapore also outstrips Malaysia when it comes to government funds for new business. Malaysia's government started a venture capital fund last year with $131 million, of which just $7.2 million has been disbursed, according to an April report from the prime minister's office.

In Singapore, the Economic Development Board says the money in its $1 billion technology fund is almost fully invested in 47 private venture capital funds, including AsiaTech Ventures, which is based in Hong Kong and invests throughout the region.

Government Money

Government backing encouraged Silicon Valley-based venture capitalist Draper Fisher Jurvetson to put its Asian headquarters in Singapore last year. The Economic Development Board put $100 million into a $690 million Draper fund aimed mostly at Europe and Asia, says Draper's Asian partner Finian Tan.

Cisco Systems Inc. made Singapore a regional headquarters in 1998 in part because of a government program that reduces taxes on Singapore-sourced income to 10 percent from the customary 25.5 percent. Cisco has boosted its staff since then to about 400 from 40, says spokesman William Oei.

Dell Computer Corp. opened a so-called Web farm-a center that hosts its Internet site-in February 2000 under a program in which the Economic Development Board subsidizes 30 to 40 percent of the new investment.

Though Singapore says it wants to move away from manufacturing, it's also throwing money at new electronics factories. Last year, the Economic Development Board invested $285 million in 58 projects. It owns 15 percent of a new $3.6 billion semiconductor plant that United Microelectronics Corp. of Taiwan is building. Vice President Chris Chi of UMC says the government investment helped his firm choose Singapore for the plant over rival locations in the U.S., Germany and China. Singapore's skilled semiconductor workers were also a draw, he says.

'I Felt Courted'

Development board officials actively seek new investment for the island by making trips to trade shows and by lobbying executives personally. Before Johan Erikkson opened a small office in Singapore for the Asia affiliate of Sweden's IconMediaLab International AB, he paid the board a visit. ''I really felt courted,'' says Erikkson, the company's director of development, who was asked what it would take to get his business.

When the Singapore office opened, board officials called to offer the company tax-free status for five years if it made Singapore its regional base. A few months later, Erikkson took them up on their offer, choosing to upgrade the Singapore office instead of offices in Malaysia and Hong Kong. Erikkson says his employees also prefer Singapore's lifestyle.

Lifestyle, in fact, may be Singapore's trump card. Investors say Singapore has more Western conveniences: 32 Starbucks cafes to Kuala Lumpur's 10, for instance. Singapore's airport is just half an hour from downtown versus a full hour for Kuala Lumpur. And its multiracial, English-speaking population makes people from throughout the region feel at home, whether they're strolling through its Little India neighborhood or eating dim sum in its Chinatown.

''If I'm going to take someone away from their family for a week, I want them to be comfortable,'' says Steven Winters, regional vice president of customer service at U.S.- based data storage company EMC Corp., which put a $3 million regional training center in Singapore this year.

With its lack of shops, restaurants and, most of all, residents, Malaysia's new technology city will be hard-pressed to match Singapore's appeal.