City & Country's interview with Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow #2

What does Penang need to do to continue to become the preferred destination for investment?

Transcript

00:00 One is the availability of industrial land is utmost important. Without sufficient land,

00:18 I think then you have nothing to offer to the investors. So we are working on land readiness,

00:29 industrial land readiness. We may have faced a little bit of problem about three, four

00:34 years ago, but currently I think over the past three years we have been actively expanding

00:44 our industrial area in Patukawan Industrial Park. We have also the Penang Science Park

00:52 North and now we are working on several new areas like the Penang Science Park South with

00:59 about 120 acres and also the Patukawan Industrial Park Three. What you see at the moment is

01:08 Patukawan Industrial Park One. We have temporarily hold on to Patukawan Industrial Park Two,

01:21 which is south of Patukawan, but we have moved on to Patukawan Industrial Park Three and

01:29 we will come back to Industrial Park Two later on. We have also the Bandar Kasiah Technology

01:36 Park which is just behind IKEA. We are getting ready about 253 acres. All in all I think

01:47 we should have an industrial park land ready to meet the demand for the next five years.

02:00 And also not forgetting we will be embarking on the reclamation on PSI. That would provide

02:08 another 700 acres of industrial land for high-tech green technology industry. In terms of land

02:20 availability, and of course we also need to look at electricity supply, water supply,

02:28 talent pool, all these are important ingredients for Penang to remain competitive and attractive

02:40 to attract investment into the state. We still have the land in Semburan Prai South, just

02:47 that we have paused it for about, we have decided to pause it for five years. The land

02:54 is still there, but we move on to a newer area in that we have started earth work for

03:07 Patukawan Industrial Park Three and also the Bandar Kasiah Technology Park. That would

03:14 create another 500-600 acres of land for PDC to attract investors. So we are focusing

03:24 on that too and then when time is right we will move on to the south because it is also

03:33 about infrastructure as well. You need to build bridges, you need to connect the roads

03:40 and electricity, water supply and so on. Whereas the other area that I talked about, Bandar

03:48 Kasiah, Patukawan Three, all these areas are already provided with the necessary infrastructure

03:58 that can move faster than the new few.

04:06 [End of Audio] Duration: 2 minutes and 30 seconds