INGENIEUR
ACPECC VISION 2025
Keynote Address By Dato’ Sri Ir. Dr Roslan Md Taha,
President, Board of Engineers Malaysia
At the ASEAN Chartered Professional Engineers Coordinating Committee (ACPECC)
Roundtable Discussion/Colloquium held in Kuala Lumpur on May 15, 2017
I
t is indeed an honour for the
Board of Engineers Malaysia to
host this auspicious event - the
ASEAN Chartered Professional
Engineers Coordinating
Committee
(ACPECC)
Roundtable Discussion. On
behalf of the Board of Engineers
Malaysia, it is my pleasure to
extend a warm welcome to all
ACPECC delegates and guests -
“Selamat Datang” as we say in
Malaysia.
Our meeting today, in this
year of 2017, coincides with
a historic milestone event -
the 50th Anniversary of the
founding of ASEAN in 1967.
Our community of nations has
since matured into a community
focused on economic integration
and growth, and consensus-
building. This is the “ASEAN
Way”, and it has resulted in
unprecedented growth - ASEAN
is now the world’s seventh-
largest market and third-largest
labour force, and has been
projected to become the fourth-
largest economic bloc by 2030.
This is further reinforced by
the launch in 2015 of ASEAN
Economic Community (AEC),
to create a single market and
production base–facilitating
even closer economic, political,
social and cultural cooperation.
Appreciating the significance
of AC EP C C in ec onomic
integration, the Board of
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BEM President delivering his
address
Engineers Malaysia took the first
step to amend its Registration
of Engineers Act 1967 towards
full liberalisation of engineering
consultancy services whereby
foreign consultancy firms can
hold 100% equity in Malaysia.
We are pleased that several
firms from ASEAN Member
States, or in short AMS, have
indicated their interest in
registering their business
presence here. We hope more
firms in AMS will set their
bases in Malaysia as an early
harvest for full liberalisation
of engineering services in
Malaysia.
Likewise, we hope other AMS
will correspondingly liberalise
the engineering services at
the earliest possible dates in
order to achieve the goal of
AEC integration in the services
sector. This will be in tandem
with the recently concluded
30 th ASEAN Summit in Manila
on April 29, 2017 which,
among others, point towards
the main deliverables for 2017,
which are to make ASEAN a
model of regionalism, as an
effective global player. It is
thus imperative that all ASEAN
Member States accelerate the
process of liberalisation to meet
the recently concluded ASEAN
Summit objective.
The Manila Summit also
i d e n t i f i e d in c lu s i ve an d
innovation–led growth as one of
the deliverables for 2017. This
is understandable as innovation
holds the key to economic and
sustainable growth in the current
global competitive environment.
ASEAN as a Community should
collaborate closely towards that
direction since ASEAN is already
enjoying high growth within the
global context.
Speaking about innovation,
as we are now in the 4th
Industrial Revolution stage,
Malaysia is proud to be the
world’s first digital free trade
zone, launched in March
2017 together with the global
Internet company Ali Baba. We
envisage that this new economic
transformation will spur new
economic activities for the
engineering sector especially