With a recycled Cabinet comprising “deadwood” Ministers from the previous failed Mahiaddin Md Yassin’s PN government, the new Prime Minister Ismail Sabri’s honeymoon is practically over with diminishing public confidence in not only his government’s ability to quickly overcome the COVID-19 pandemic and economic crisis but also in securing Malaysia’s digital future. Malaysia had missed out on the key undersea cable infrastructure project undertaken by both Facebook and Google due to the previous PN Transport Minister Wee Ka Siong’s stubborn refusal to continue granting a cabotage exemption to them.
Wee had refused on 13 November 2020 to continue the previous PH government’s cabotage policy of granting an exemption to foreign ships carrying repairs of submarine cables to encourage foreign digital investments. The stubbornness of Wee in clinging to a failed cabotage policy had caused Facebook and Google to bypass Malaysia, when their concerns of delays of up to 27 days for submarine cable repairs were ignored.
Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) chairman Rais Hussin had openly blamed Wee’s revocation of the cabotage exemption for causing Malaysia to be side-lined by Facebook and Google in favour of Singapore and Indonesia, as well as jeopardised potential data centre investments worth RM 12-15 billion in foreign investment. When the government’s own MDEC Chairman can openly castigate Wee for his incompetence and policy failure, why is Wee so stubborn in refusing to heed to reason for the sake of the digital future of our young?
Many in the digital industry had hoped that when Wee was forced to resign together with Prime Minister Mahiaddin Md Yassin after losing his parliamentary majority, a new Transport Minister can reverse Wee’s discredited cabotage policy. Unfortunately Wee has been repackaged again as the Transport Minister by Ismail Sabri, giving no hope that the cabotage exemption will be reinstated to induce Facebook or Google to return to Malaysia.
Earlier this month, there were new reports that Apricot, Facebook and Google’s new subsea cable, aimed at boosting regional connectivity, would bypass Malaysia entirely. Facebook said in a statement that the cable system, expected to launch in 2024, would provide an initial design capacity of more than 190 tera bytes per second (tbps) to meet rising data demand in the region and support the upcoming Echo and Bifrost cables, which also will not connect to Malaysia. Without submarine cables, data centres will not flourish, and at that point how can we attract digital investments that matter? Why will renowned high-tech digital companies like Zoom or TikTok come here then?
Ismail Sabri should show that he is different from the failed government of Mahiaddin Md Yassin by putting national interests and our digital future over selfish political and private interests. Ismail must renounce Wee Ka Siong’s discredited cabotage policy that has jeopardised digital investments of between RM 12-15 billion and reinstate the cabotage exemption, to secure our digital future and induce high-tech digital companies like Facebook and Google not to entirely bypass but to return to Malaysia.