Zafrul: Govt looking at ways to catalyse smart public-private partnerships between GLICs, global investors to support sustainable manufacturing
12 Sep 2023
The government is looking at ways to catalyse new and smart public-private partnerships between government-linked investment companies (GLICs) and global investors, especially in areas of technologies that support sustainable manufacturing and net-zero supply chains, said Investment, Trade and Industry Minister (Miti) Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz.
This is one of the government’s strategies to achieve its National Industrial Master Plan (NIMP) 2030 for the sustainable and inclusive economic growth of the country.
“Our manufacturing sector’s ability to thrive in the future is closely linked to Malaysia’s ability to engineer successful collaborations across critical stakeholder groups. This includes each sector’s core supply chain partners across various industries; complementary players; and public sector stakeholders, including government linked companies (GLCs) and GLICs,” said Tengku Zafrul on Monday in his keynote address at The Cooler Earth Sustainability Summit 2023 hosted by CIMB Group Holdings Bhd.
While creating new frameworks for collaboration between the public and private sectors, the government will ensure that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have the opportunity to improve their environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices, said the minister.
“In ensuring inclusivity, our i-ESG framework will serve as a comprehensive guideline for the manufacturing sector, particularly SMEs, to embrace ESG principles, by facilitating them on standards, capacity enhancement, financing, and market mechanisms. Each will feature its own transition programmes,” said Tengku Zafrul.
The i-ESG framework will also be streamlined with the Securities Commission’s Simplified ESG Disclosure Guide (SEDG) for SMEs, developed to enable SMEs to embrace sustainability and respond to disclosure requests from stakeholders, including customers, investors, banks and regulators, according to the minister.
These whole-of-nation efforts are key to ensuring that SMEs will continue to have access to ESG-sensitive markets and be part of ESG-centric vendor ecosystems, said Tengku Zafrul.
“I believe I have shared enough on why and how Miti aims to institutionalise sustainable manufacturing in this country, particularly through the NIMP 2030. What is super-crucial now is execution, and speed!
“To those with the right capacity, we need your support to ensure supply chain security and resiliency, without which there will be no sustainable manufacturing. We also need your support on rapid adoption of technology and digitisation in smart manufacturing to achieve our sustainable manufacturing goals. Catalytic, smart public-private partnerships are key to execution and in moving the ESG needle in sustainable manufacturing,” he added.
NIMP 2030 was launched by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim earlier this month. It focuses on nurturing higher economic complexity; aggressively embracing technology, underscored by sustainability and inclusivity principles.
Source: The Edge Malaysia
