The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), in partnership with Malaysia India Business Council (MIBC), Malaysia Investment Development Authority (MIDA), Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation (MATRADE) and support from High Commission of India to Malaysia & High Commission of Malaysia to India, organized the India-Malaysia Strategic Business Summit on the 8th of February 2022, over a virtual platform.
The objective of the Summit was to enhance bilateral relationship between India and Malaysia and also to further boost trade and investment between both the countries. India and Malaysia share a long-standing relationship, with mutually beneficial trade at its core. As per the World Bank Doing Business 2020 report, Malaysia is ranked 12th among 190 countries globally. Malaysia is the 27th most competitive nation in the world out of 140 countries ranked in the Global Competitiveness Report 2018 published by the World Economic Forum.
The two countries have forged close economic and commercial ties which has emerged as the mainstay of their bilateral partnership. The bilateral trade between two nations in 2019-20 was US$16.14 billion with total exports from India to Malaysia amounting to approximately US$ 6.3 billion while its imports from Malaysia stood at around US$ 9.7 billion.
With strengthening bilateral economic and commercial relations, Malaysia has moved up three places to emerge as the 3rd largest trading partner for India in the ASEAN Region. The Summit, with sessions around various tracks aims to facilitate discussions on opportunities and concerns being faced by businesses from few priority sectors such as Construction, Digitalisation, Healthcare, Vaccines and Pharmaceutical Manufacturing.
Professor Dr Srikumar Chakravarthi, MAHSA University's Director of Research, Innovation and Enterprise was one of the anchor speakers in the Healthcare and Vaccine sector. His session which was themed: Partnering for a Healthy Future: Opportunities in the Healthcare Sector. The Summit focused on the pandemic-inflicted strain on workforce, infrastructure and supply chain of the healthcare sector, as well as how the pandemic had also been an accelerating factor of change across the ecosystem which pushed public and private health systems to adapt and innovate quickly, resulting in rising investment in healthcare technologies such as telemedicine and remote monitoring. Through this Summit, mutual synergies in production and development of pharmaceuticals, vaccines, healthcare research and development will be explored.
India-Malaysia Strategic Business Summit-Innagural