Transcript: Malaysia insights and opportunities
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Susan Kahwati - Senior Trade Commissioner Malaysia and Brunei
Susan manages 14 staff who promote Australia’s trade, investment and education interests in Malaysia and Brunei. The team pursues opportunities across diverse sectors including food safety and security, social infrastructure, aged care, oil and gas, education and training, ICT, defence and workforce capability development. Susan speaks Arabic.
She has worked with Austrade for more than 20 years both in Australia and internationally. She was previously Trade Commissioner in Dubai and Athens, and has worked in Austrade’s offices in Sydney, Adelaide, Canberra and Tokyo. Prior to her posting to Kuala Lumpur, she was the Group Manager, Online Services and Information Practice, where was involved in the design and delivery of Austrade’s core business systems and online strategy.
Transcript
>>Susan Kahwati: Malaysia is one of the fastest growing economies in Asia. It's situated right in the middle of a number of Asia's high growth markets. It's one of only 13 countries in the world that has achieved an average GDP growth rate of 7% in the last 25 years.
Malaysia's managed to transform itself into an upper-middle income economy in only one generation, and it's managed to weather the financial crisis and global downturns quite well compared to many other countries.
There are opportunities for Australian businesses to position themselves to help Malaysia achieve its long term goal of becoming a service based economy.
Two way trade in goods and services between Australia and Malaysia reached more than 17 billion dollars last year. So the relationship between our two countries is quite strong. That relationship took a big step forward on the 1st of January this year with the coming into force of the Malaysia-Australia Free Trade Agreement, also known as MAFTA. Currently 97.6% of all goods coming in from Australia into Malaysia can enter duty free.
MAFTA also enhances business cooperation between Malaysia in a number of key areas, including agribusiness, tourism, e-commerce, clean energy and automotive. MAFTA also streamlines business rules between Australia and Malaysia, so now Australians can work more readily in Malaysia and the rules of origin between our two countries has become simpler.
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