Malaysia's MSC: Super corridor or dead
end? By Ioannis Gatsiounis
KUALA LUMPUR - Nothing in Malaysia so embodies
former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad's vision for the
nation than the 50-kilometer stretch of palm and
rubber-patched plains between the airport and the
capital. Known as the Multimedia Super Corridor and
ballyhooing world-class infrastructure, it was intended
to attract foreign capital, trigger a technological
revolution and lead the nation to fully developed status
by 2020.
To Mahathir it was the next logical
leap. The economy under his feisty 22-year rule had
transformed from agrarian-based to
export-manufacturing-driven. Why stop there? The MSC is
the superhighway Mahathir has paved for Malaysia.
A visit to the corridor's capital, Cyberjaya,
though, suggests the dream hasn't entirely lived up to
expectations. Five years after ground was broken, it
appears as if the 21st century has come and gone. Or
hasn't come at all. Weedy, barren fields await the
arrival of construction crews. "Smart" condominiums
boasting "broadband access" and "online shopping" are
running at low occupancy. The main shopping complex is
often eerily quiet, as are the wide, flat roadways
beneath which lie kilometers of fiber optics.
Some heavy hitters of the information-technology
(IT) world such as Fujitsu, Ericsson, and most recently
Motorola, have come, lured by tax breaks, grants and
other incentives. A creative college plans soon to
relocate to Cyberjaya. And around the end of this month
the government is expected to make a vote of confidence
when it unveils Phase 2 of the MSC, which will link the
corridor to other cities around Malaysia and the globe.
But with the Mahathir era fast fading,
Malaysians and the world seem less impressed by the
grandiosity of the MSC than they did a few short years
ago, when Malaysia looked primed to become one of the
few countries to make the elusive leap from developing
to developed status. Indeed terms that sprinkle
Cyberjaya's marketing brochures and landscape, such as
"connected", "wireless", "borderless", and "E-ready"
verge on passe. ("Dot.com", the boom from which the
dream spawned, has wisely gone missing.)
"Malaysia has fiber optics - so?" quipped one
investor.
So do rivals India, Thailand and
China, which while not exactly centers of innovation
offer similar incentives, and in some cases much lower
costs.
MSC officials point out that the corridor
is home to 500 companies and since its inception seven
years ago has employed 15,000 people, 87 percent home
grown, and this surpasses targets. Sliding targets,
perhaps - in 2000, officials said they expected the
population of just Cyberjaya to surpass 20,000 by
mid-2001. Regardless, numbers are rising, say MSC
officials.
Mahathir, too, hasn't wavered much
from the hard sell. "You are seeing beautiful buildings
which are not empty but full of people working in there.
That was what we expected," he said before retirement
last year.
Others are less optimistic.
"Somewhere it lost a lot of steam along the
way," opined Singapore-based economist Song Seng Wun,
adding that too much emphasis has been placed on high
tech and innovation, a call Malaysians haven't
wholeheartedly stepped up to.
Responding to the
concern last week, Technology and Innovations Minister
Jamaludin Jarjis urged MSC companies not to overlap and
duplicate research, calling this "wasteful".
The
government has been loath, publicly at least, to
acknowledge that the plan might need an overhaul - that
would be to admit a US$17 billion blunder in the case of
Cyberjaya alone. But it's becoming harder to ignore.
There's a growing sense around Malaysia that
Mahathir's megaprojects may have hindered as much as
hampered growth, and dealt as much in appearances as
substance. By Mahathir's own admission, they were
designed in part to woo potential investors. Two other
Mahathir megaprojects make up the bookends to the MSC,
the vitreous, streamlined airport to the south and the
dazzling Petronas office towers in downtown Kuala
Lumpur, until last year the world's tallest buildings; a
high-speed express train shuttles passengers to and fro.
As a whole, the stretch pumped the spirit of
Malaysia boleh, or "Malaysia can". Now when
Malaysians utter the phrase it's more often than not
with irony. In the case of the airport and twin towers
they're starting to look a bit like eyesores, reminders
of what once seemed possible; not much has come along to
compliment their grandeur. And Malaysia is finding that
it takes much more than a high-tech pipe dream to
distinguish yourself, raising the unspoken: Is Malaysia
plateauing? Must this stable, talented, functional,
resource-rich nation rethink itself if it is to live up
to its potential?
When Mahathir's deputy
Abdullah Badawi took over as premier last October, a
sense of optimism swept the country - in large part
because he appeared set to diverge from his predecessor.
He tabled a grand railway project and vowed to
concentrate more on rural development. That and other
promises catapulted his coalition to a huge if
underhanded parliamentary election win last month. His
vision, however, remains a puzzle.
"There's been
talk about shifting priorities, but [the government] has
not been clear what direction it's going to take," said
economist Jomo K S, adding that rethinking a national
strategy is overdue, but "it must be informed
carefully".
Perhaps a hint lies in Biovalley, a
200-hectare site set to open near Cyberjaya in 2006,
with the aim of attracting 150 biotech companies and $10
billion in investment by 2015. It might prove the
equipoise Malaysia needs: a simultaneous investment in
the MSC and a deviation from its original focus. Biotech
- it almost sounds like a natural fit for Malaysia's
fertile equatorial soil (see Malaysia's new dream:
Biovalley, December 24, 2003).
The
verdict on the MSC's fate is still out. And who knows,
Phase 2 might capitalize on lessons learned and prove so
brilliant as to silence skeptics.
Rob Cayzer,
senior manager with the Multimedia Development Corp, the
MSC's overseeing body, sees no reason not to be
optimistic. "The talent in Malaysia is as good as it is
in any other developing country: infrastructure's as
good, and so is cost."
He may have a point, but
as Malaysia is finding out the hard way, that's no
guarantee investors will come.
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