Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad said the country will offer citizenship to foreigners who are experts in fields deemed important to the country.

This was in line with the government’s efforts to encourage foreign direct investment (FDI), and to train the local workforce with skills in high technology sectors.

“I think we need input from foreign countries with technology. We will make ways to encourage people with skills to come and live here, and we will give them citizenship even.

“Before, the policy was not to give citizenship to foreigners, but now if the foreigners come with certain skills that we want, we will invite them to stay in this country and they will become citizens if they want to.

“We would like to have more people will the brains to come and live in Malaysia and contribute towards its industrialisation programmes,” he said during a question and answer session at the American Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Kuala Lumpur today.

Among the 240 in the audience were executives from Deloitte, West Digital, JP Morgan, AmMet Life and Citibank.

Earlier in his keynote address at the event, Mahathir, who assumed the role of prime minister after Pakatan Harapan won in the May 9 elections, had assured that his government was “very business friendly” and wanted to encourage a bigger quantum of FDIs into the country.

“We want to encourage FDIs, particularly in high tech industries, which needs people to be better trained.

“We have a lot of graduates which are unemployed today, but we will train even more people for the new kinds of industries which are based on Information Technology (IT) and electronics,” he said.

Govt to revive Cyberjaya

Mahathir also said that the government intends to revive Cyberjaya to full Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) status.

He hoped this would further bring more foreign investors into the country.

“We want to again stimulate the growth of (Cyberjaya), we expect lots of foreign investors to come in.

“[...] we expect more companies to come and set up their plants and research labs here.

“And then, of course, it will live up to its name MSC again,” he said in response to a question from the audience about the fate of the MSC.

Mahathir opined how Cyberjaya had over the years become a regular township rather than a technological hub.

The premier also promised to invest in whatever infrastructure is needed by companies located in that special economic zone.

“We will put in as much infrastructure as possible to attract people again, to Cyberjaya in particular, and also into the corridor (as a whole),” he added.

Launched in 1996 by Mahathir during his first tenure as premier, the MSC extends from the Petronas Twin Towers in the capital to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang and includes both Cyberjaya and Putrajaya.