A screenshot of the Zoom meeting between those participating in the discussion.
Riot (right) and an unnamed official from his office participate in the online discussion via the Zoom app from Putrajaya.
KUCHING: Malaysia continues to seek guidance and inspiration from innovative countries such as Japan to take advantage of changes during this Covid-19 pandemic, said Prime Minister’s Special Envoy to East Asia (Japan, South Korea and Taiwan) Dato Sri Richard Riot Jaem.
“Today, we have more than 1,500 Japanese companies in Malaysia, giving employment to 340,000 Malaysians.
“But the post-Covid-19 world poses new challenges and it is our hope that new types of Japanese companies with new technologies and supply chains will invest in Malaysia and grow together with Malaysia for our mutual benefit,” said Riot at a Virtual Roundtable Discussion organised by MY NIPPON Forum yesterday.
He reiterated that it is clear that the pre-Covid-19 model of development needs to be re-evaluated.
“We need new models for creating wealth and economic growth. We need to understand how the pattern of global supply chains will change,” he added.
He said among the important policy decisions made by the Malaysian government following the outbreak of Covid-19 was the creation of his office – the Special Envoy to East Asia.
“We recognise the huge importance of having a recovery strategy that can stimulate economic growth and create jobs. And we need to do it in a hurry.
“Because the pandemic has created huge stress-points to our businesses and industries and affected the job prospects of a very large number of Malaysians,” he added.
He also mentioned that Malaysia has already put in place innovative policies to soften the impact of the pandemic.
He also said when he was the Minister for Human Resource (from 2013 to 2018) he was involved in creating the worker insurance scheme which is now a critical lifeline
to workers who have lost their jobs.
“But what we need to do now is to ensure that we are ready to ride the wave when the process of recovery begins.
“For that, we need to ensure that the building blocks of our economic recovery are in place. We need to ensure that we have the correct economic activities that can create the jobs needed in the post-Covid-19 world,” he said.
The session was moderated by MY NIPPON Forum chief executive officer Dr Shahridan Faiez and three other speakers – The World Bank director (Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines & Brunei) Dr Ndiame Diop, Japan External Trade Organization (Jetro) Malaysia managing director Mai Onozawa and Foreign Investments Promotion Division, Malaysia Investment Development Authority (Mida) deputy director Mohd Hamim Hamdan Mustafa.