Jeddah, 22 January 2012: The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) Group has embarked on a multi-year Member Country Partnership Strategy (MCPS) for Malaysia aligning it with the Government’s development priorities as underlined in the Tenth Malaysia Plan and Vision 2020. In particular, the strategy is aimed at partnering with the country in its efforts towards achieving the status of high income and advanced economy.

The MCPS is being formulated through a wide-ranging consultative process with all key stakeholders in the country. In this regard, two workshops were conducted on 16 January and 18 January 2012 in Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya respectively, which were attended by the representatives of public and private sectors, business community, academia, and civil society. The first workshop was jointly inaugurated by Dato’ Mohammad Irwan Abdallah, Deputy Secretary General, Ministry of Finance and Mohammad
Jamal Al-Saati, Director, Country Programs Department, IDB. The second workshop was jointly inaugurated by Tan Sri Dr. Wan Abdul Aziz bin Wan Abdullah, Secretary General, Ministry of Finance, Government of Malaysia and Mr. Kunrat Wirasubrata, Office-in-Charge, IDB Regional Office Kuala Lumpur. , The IDB Group presentation was led by Mr. Ahmed Saleh Hariri, Regional Manager for South & South East Asia. The President of the IDB Group, Dr. Ahmad Mohamed Ali also participated in the concluding
session of the first workshop. These Workshops were aimed at stimulating open discussion and engaging key policy makers and private sector representatives in designing an implementable partnership strategy for the country.

The MCPS for Malaysia focuses on two main pillars: (1) addressing key challenges towards achieving sustainable economic growth through private sector Development: and (2) exporting the Malaysian expertise to other IDB Member Countries through reverse linkages initiative. Under the first pillar, the MCPS exercise identified key strategic areas for the IDB Group interventions in private sector development through public private partnerships; private sector financing; trade financing and risk
mitigation; co-financing/ syndication; equity financing; infrastructure development; resource mobilization; capacity building; and business improvement advisory services. Under the second pillar of reverse linkages, the IDB Group intends to play a facilitating role in exporting Malaysian expertise to other IDB Member Countries by promoting Islamic finance; science & technology; small and medium enterprises; Halal industry; services industry; and trade and investments insurance. The IDB Group
intends to support these multi-sector and area-focused programs in Malaysia during the next four years (2012-2015).