High Tech Facility – National Investment Aspirations (HTF-NIA) Financial Assistance

1. As announced in the Budget 2021 speech by the Minister of Finance, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) is establishing a RM1 billion High Tech Facility – National Investment Aspirations (HTF-NIA), as part of efforts to provide additional assistance for SMEs affected by COVID-19.

2. The facility is aimed at supporting high-tech and innovation-driven SMEs affected by COVID-19 to recover and revitalise the nation’s innovation capacity. 

3. This is critical to strengthen Malaysia’s competitive positioning in global value chains, preserve the supply chain ecosystem and safeguard high-skilled jobs.

China’s Incentives for Integrated Circuit, Software Enterprises

1. On August 4, 2020, China’s State Council released the Policies of Promoting High-quality Development of Integrated Circuit Industry and Software Industry.

2. The document lays out a wide range of policies to shore up the development of the integrated circuit (IC) and software industries, applying to all companies registered in China, regardless of nationality.

3. China has provided support policies for the two sectors since 2000, which are updated every decade – this is the second such update since their roll-out.

Updates on BOI (Thailand)’s Investment Promotion Packages

 1. The meeting of the Board of Investment of Thailand (the “BOI”) held on 4 November 2020 approved a large number of packages in order to promote more investment in various businesses. 

2. Updates regarding the BOI measures can be categorized into three (3) types as follows:

RCEP - world's largest Free Trade Agreement, Background, Scope & Chapters

 BACKGROUND
1. The RCEP negotiations was launched in November 2012 at the 21st ASEAN Summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia but the negotiations only formally started in 2013.

2. Initially, RCEP was negotiated by 16 countries, consisting 10 ASEAN Member States (AMS) and ASEAN’s Free Trade Area (FTA) Partners or better known as AFPs. The AFPS are Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea as well as New Zealand.

3. Later in November 2019, during the ASEAN Summit, Prime Minister of India, Mr Narendra Modi announced that India cannot join RCEP in its current form.

4. In gist, the objective of RCEP is to streamline and amalgamate the ASEAN FTAs with its Dialogue Partners (ASEAN + 1 FTAs) into a single regional trade agreement that can contribute to strengthening regional value chain actives in the region as well make RCEP more user-friendly and simpler to use especially for the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

5. The ASEAN + 1 FTAs are:

ASEAN-China FTA

ASEAN-Australia New Zealand FTA

ASEAN-India FTA

ASEAN-Japan FTA

ASEAN-Korea FTA