KUALA LUMPUR  More initiatives need to be taken to promote the economic development corridors to encourage the flow of investment into these areas, International Trade and Industry Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said.

He said from time to time, specific missions should be organised by both the Federal Government and state governments to see that the regional corridors at the respective states could be promoted.

“I think there is still a need for the corridors to be promoted more. That’s what we are trying to do now,” he told reporters Monday after the announcement of the setting up of National Instruments first manufacturing, research and development and operations facility in Malaysia here.

He said state governments also had to come up with tailor-made incentive plans for the particular areas.

“For example, land availability at much more affordable prices and the availability of manpower, who are trained in that particular region. These are the things we have to look at besides infrastructure and logistics that need to be developed from time to time.”

“I think there is a definite need for us to take more initiatives to improve exisiting facilities in those regions,” he said when asked whether there is any increase in investments in the economic growth corridors.

Asked about the investment flow into areas within the economic corridors other than Penang, which had been attracting a lot of investors, he said: “As usual, we normally leave it to the investors to decide the best location for investments. They have to take into account many things - infrastructure support, availability of skills, manpower, logistics and what not.

At the same time, he said the Government wanted to enourage potential investors to look beyond developed areas of the development corridors - Iskandar Development Region (IDR) in southern Johor, the Northern Corridor Economic Region (NCER) and the East Coast Economic Region (ECER), the Sabah Development Corridor (SDC) and the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (Score).

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