On his last official day as a Cabinet Minister, Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz reflected on a challenging year, noting Malaysia’s Asean chairmanship and ongoing US tariff talks.
Speaking at the Concorde Club on Tuesday (Dec 2), the outgoing Miti Minister said the Malaysia–US Reciprocal Trade Agreement (ART) is vital for protecting market access and Malaysian livelihoods, and affirmed the ministry acted with a clear conscience.
Zafrul also said China has proposed a preliminary MOU to boost trade and investment cooperation, focusing on strategic sectors and mutual investments.
00:00Mr. Shri, can we ask about the MOU of China you mentioned in Paribas yesterday?
00:04Do you just know what issues that China wants to address only in this event?
00:09Yeah, so during the meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Premier Li Chang together with the Prime Minister
00:15and I was present with Mike Kanterpan, Minister of Commerce, Wang Yi.
00:20So we discussed about some of the concerns they have on art, right?
00:26Because they don't want to be in a position where we give preferential treatment to the U.S.
00:36So we gave our explanation during the meeting in KL and we also agreed to meet again in Beijing.
00:42And we sent our team in Beijing last week and we explained about the wordings,
00:50the implication of art to China and they are satisfied.
00:54However, they are saying that they also want to strengthen the collaboration on trade and investment with Malaysia.
01:04So they proposed the idea of MOU.
01:06To be fair, even in Kuala Lumpur, they already talked about that possibility.
01:11But in China and Beijing, they talked about it in greater detail about their commitment to push for this MOU.
01:20The details of the MOU is very preliminary, but basically the parameters is to look at how Malaysia and China can improve
01:29and also look at strategic sectors that they feel Malaysia can also support Chinese companies to play a role here in Malaysia and of course ASEAN.
01:49So it's still very preliminary, but as I mentioned in Parliament yesterday, it was not a statement where they don't want to work with us.
02:02In fact, it's a statement that they feel that they want to work closer with us and they want it to be more tangible.
02:09Of course, for them it's slightly different.
02:12We have FTA as well, so there are agreements under the free trade agreement for RCEP as well as for the ASEAN-China.
02:21So we are already comprehensive strategic partners with China, right?
02:25Yeah, and also we upgraded US to comprehensive partnership.
02:29Yeah, so this MOU will further elevate and also what industry will it cover?
02:33It's still very preliminary.
02:34Like I said, we just had one meeting so far, so we will update accordingly.
02:39Look back at your year as in charge of the economic cluster of ASEAN with the China Gulf ASEAN Summit with the 3.0 upgrade,
02:52the first RCEP Summit since the signing, and tackling the tariff issue.
02:58How do you see your year as navigating all these things, the positives and the negatives and the challenges and the achievements?
03:07Yeah, well, it's been a challenging year.
03:13To say it's an exciting year is an understatement.
03:17But at the same time, we are lucky, I mean, personally, I'm also lucky to have a team,
03:22a strong team to support me and the ministry and the government to navigate these challenges on the issue of art,
03:30which is a very important agreement that we have signed with the US,
03:34important in the sense that it protects our market access, but also protects the livelihoods of millions of Malaysians.
03:42I think we have, I mean, our conscience is clear.
03:44We think we did the best we can.
03:46But having said that, we will continue to engage the US and continue to diversify to other markets
03:54and strengthen our companies themselves.
03:56So this is where the other challenge is to ensure that Malaysian companies remain competitive.
04:02As companies realign and redesign their supply chain, we do not want to be left out of their supply chain.
04:09And Malaysian companies who are provider to many of these big companies, provider meaning part of their supply chain,
04:15if we are not competitive enough, we will be out of their supply chain.
04:19So that, I think, is the other challenge that people don't speak about, but it is equally important as the art itself.
04:27And how important was it to wrap up the China-Acea Free Great Agreement upgrade this year,
04:32especially in the context of everything else that's happening?
04:35Yeah, well, that happened late last year when we took over the championship.
04:41On 1st of January, we already had the 18 priority economy deliverables.
04:45That's one of them.
04:46It was so important to complete that ASEAN-China FD8 upgrade 3.0 protocol
04:51because China is the largest trading partner for ASEAN.
04:57And now ASEAN is also the largest trading partner for China.
05:00So we need to ensure that a bit more balanced trade for ASEAN with China.
05:08So we wanted more market access.
05:09We're talking about for ASEAN, we wanted more better market access to China.
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