GEORGE TOWN – Penang hopes that Budget 2023 will offer incentives for foreign undergraduates to work in the country to overcome labour shortages in the manufacturing and services sectors, Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow said.
He said there are foreign students who could be enticed to work in Malaysia after completing their studies at local public and private institutions of higher learning.
“This could help us to temporarily overcome the current acute shortage of workers, especially skilled labour,” said Chow after opening the Penang branch of the Ernst & Young (EY) Consulting Sdn Bhd office at Wisma AIA in Straits Quay here, today.
It was reported that Malaysia is home to more than 170,000 international students from 162 countries, of which 10,000 are from Indonesia.
The Education Ministry also plans for the country to have 250,000 international students by 2025.
Chow said that attaining skilled talent is critical as Malaysia must compete with regional countries for the same talents and investments.
He said that the Human Resources Ministry needs to create a proper ecosystem to entice talents to either want to come to Malaysia, or to continue to remain in the country.
For example, Chow said that the ministry can come up with a three- to five-years job incentive programme for foreign graduates, so they can learn on the job and contribute to the economy through their spending here.
Penang needs up to 150,000 knowledge workers in the next five years to meet the demand from investors and small and medium enterprises.
Earlier, Chow said that Penang’s economy is resilient, recording the highest levels of investments from 2019 to 2021 with a total of RM107.2 billion secured, creating 51,000 jobs in the process.
The state also is the fastest to surpass the national growth average of 5.8%, with an annual growth forecast of 6% in the coming years, following the reopening of all economic sectors after the Covid-19 pandemic, Chow added.
Meanwhile, EY Malaysia managing partner Datuk Abdul Rauf Rashid said Penang is one of the firm’s 2,000 centres of excellence in the Asia-Pacific region.
Tech firm SAP Malaysia Sdn Bhd interim managing director Cynthia Quah, whose firm has teamed up with EY and Digital Penang through a joint venture to identify talent, said that Penang needs to arrest the trend of its graduates finding jobs in Singapore and the Klang Valley, citing that the state needs to find ways to retain its talent. – The Vibes, August 29, 2022
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