Transport Minister Anthony Loke\u2019s announcement to reinstate an exemption under Malaysia\u2019s cabotage policy for specialised ships used to install and maintain undersea cables, that form the backbone of the world\u2019s internet infrastructure, is an important reform that will attract mega digital investments into Malaysia.<\/p>\n
Loke\u2019s move, effective June 1 onwards, marks a reversal of his predecessor, PN\u2019s Minister of Transport Wee Ka Siong\u2019s revocation of the policy in 2020. The cabotage policy exemption under Section 65U of the Merchant Shipping Ordinance applies to all cable-laying ships engaged in the installation, maintenance and repair of submarine telecommunication cable landed at any submarine cable landing centre in Malaysian waters.<\/p>\n
Wee had attracted brickbats for revoking Loke\u2019s earlier decision to grant the exemption, which was seen as a disincentive for billions of ringgit of digital investments. Loke\u2019s reinstatement of the exemption, which was widely anticipated, would help to recoup and recover digital investments.<\/p>\n
This was evident with the billions of US dollars of digital investments from internet and digital giants, the latest being Google\u2019s USD $2 billion in investments in Selangor to develop its first data center and a cloud facility. This is Google\u2019s largest planned investment in the Southeast Asian nation, according to Alphabet Inc. Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat.<\/p>\n
Loke\u2019s adoption of a progressive regulatory framework can promote more investments in the tech sector and accelerate the development of Malaysia\u2019s digital infrastructure.<\/p>\n
LIM GUAN ENG<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Transport Minister Anthony Loke\u2019s announcement to reinstate an exemption under Malaysia\u2019s cabotage policy for specialised ships used to install and maintain undersea cables, that form the backbone of the world\u2019s internet infrastructure, is an important reform that will attract mega digital investments into Malaysia. Loke\u2019s move, effective June 1 onwards, marks a reversal of his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":48915,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[458,769,475],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-48967","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-current-affairs","8":"category-featured","9":"category-national"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48970,"href":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48967\/revisions\/48970"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dapmalaysia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}