M'SIA WILL STEP UP ECONOMIC, CULTURAL LINKS WITH GUANGDONG

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 12 (Bernama) -- Malaysia will enhance economic and
cultural ties with China's Guangdong province via a mechanism to be set up by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak said Friday.

The Malaysian government and the Guangdong province authorities have agreed to establish a mechanism through MITI which would serve as a platform to discuss
prospects of expanding Guangdong-Malaysia and Malaysia-China bilateral
relations, he told reporters after opening China (Guangdong)-Malaysia Business
Conference 2008.

Najib said there were encouraging prospects for stronger ties between
Malaysia and China as Guangdong was a huge economic region in China and among
the earliest to be opened to foreign investors.

"Guangdong's economic growth is double that of Malaysia's," said Najib who
earlier met Wang Yang, a member of the central committee of the political bureau
of the Communist Party of China and Guangdong provincial party secretary.

Earlier, in his speech, Najib called for China (Guangdong)-Malaysia
joint-venture initiatives on value-added high technology industries, especially
electronics, information technology, bio-medicine, software and animation.

"Of course, such potentially-rewarding partnership should also exploit
opportunities in the services sector, primarily finance, wholesale and retail
trade, tourism, transport and communications," he said.

He said 40 percent of the total trade between Malaysia and China last
year was between Malaysia and Guangdong, adding that the province offered vast
opportunities in trade, tourism and investment.

He also pointed out that Malaysia offered plenty of business opportunities
for Chinese entrepreneurs in the five regional development corridors, namely
Iskandar Malaysia, Northern Corridor Economic Region, East Coast Economic
Region, Sabah Development Corridor and Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy.

-- BERNAMA