Moving forward: Onn Hafiz (right) meeting with Vivian at the Minister for Foreign Affairs office in Singapore.
SINGAPORE: Johor and Singapore will explore new ventures that can catapult economic relations between the two to a higher level, says Mentri Besar Datuk Onn Hafiz Ghazi.
“As a neighbouring country, Singapore plays an important role in the growth of the state economy,” he said in a Facebook post.
The Mentri Besar is in Singapore for a three-day working visit.
This will be the third time Onn Hafiz has made an official work visit to the island republic since being sworn in as the 19th Johor Mentri Besar on March 15 last year.
On the second day of his visit yesterday, he met with Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan and Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Dr Mohamad Maliki Osman.
“A lot of matters were discussed, especially those involving bilateral relations between Singapore and Johor,” he said of the meeting.
Onn Hafiz said he was pleased to hear how relations between Johor and Singapore remained strong despite having to face challenges ,including the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Moving forward, we have agreed to look into more initiatives that we can explore together, seeing that we have more than 300,000 people crossing the Causeway each day,” he added.
Earlier, Onn Hafiz had said that Johor has the potential to draw investments of around RM15bil from several international companies based in Singapore.
He said this following his meeting with representatives of several such companies, among them AirTrunk, the biggest hyper-scale data centre company in Asia-Pacific and Japan, and Wilhelmsen, one of the most renowned global maritime groups.
“Besides the thousands of high- income jobs, economic spillovers and developments that will be generated from these investments, it will bring more prosperity to the people in the state.
“All these shows that Johor continues to be the main destination of choice for industry players at the global level,” he said.
He said the state, with the help of the federal government, was committed to facilitating and drawing investments to Johor in terms of offering utilities, infrastructure and tax incentives, as well as providing a more investor-friendly environment to industry players.
