Malaysia Offers More Incentives to Increase Investment in Johor

Malaysia Offers More Incentives to Increase Investment in Johor
Taken from Bloomberg

Malaysia will extend tax breaks and other incentives in Johor to developers in the so-called Iskandar Regional Development to attract 40 billion ringgit ($11.8 billion) in five years to develop the area.

Developers in the Iskandar region will be exempt from paying income tax until 2015 on earnings from land sales and until 2020 on income from the rental or sale of buildings, the Iskandar Regional Development Authority said in a release today.

``Since private investments will be the main catalyst of growth, there is a need to offer investors attractive fiscal and non-fiscal incentives,'' Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told reporters today in Putrajaya, outside Kuala Lumpur.

Abdullah is wooing foreign money with easier investment rules and tax breaks, aiming to attract 382 billion ringgit in two decades to redevelop Johor, 2 1/2 times the size of bordering Singapore, and turn the southern state into a global destination for business and leisure.

The government said in March some overseas companies setting up in Johor's so-called Iskandar Development Region won't need to comply with a rule requiring foreign-owned companies to have at least 30 percent ethnic Malay ownership. Those investments will also be exempt from income tax for 10 years.