MALAYSIAN investors have been urged to invest in the seven major industries of Guangxi in western China, based on the abundance of opportunities in these industries. 

Making this call, Governor of Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, Lu Bing said the best industries to invest in were automobiles, sugar refining, aluminium production, non-ferrous metal processing, machinery, pharmaceutical production and foodstuff. 

“As an emerging region in China, there is tremendous potential to be tapped and to be developed in Guangxi especially in these areas which promise broad prospects and boundless business opportunities for Malaysians,” he said in his keynote address at the Guangxi Investment Co-operation Talk, held in Kuala Lumpur last Friday. 

The talk was part of the Chinese government's efforts to promote foreign investments in its western provinces. 

As for the year 2001 to 2004, Lu said that Guangxi's economy saw a record growth, registering an average annual growth rate of 10.2 percent. 

“Guangzi now has entered the phase of accelerated industrialisation and urbanisation, and the next fifteen years will be a golden period for its development,” he said. 

Meanwhile, parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Dr Tan Yee Kew, said with the implementation of the tariff reduction programme under the agreement of Asean-China Free Trade Area (ACFTA), it would further give a boost to Malaysian investors to get earlier access into the Chinese market. 

The ACFTA, which would start on July 1 this year, would be completed by 2010 for Asean Six (Malaysia, China, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia & Brunei) and 2015 for Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. 

Tan said that the establishment of ACFTA would be one of the world's biggest free trade zones with a combined market of more than 1.7 billion people, gross domestic product of more than US$2tril and total trade of over US$1.2tril. 

She said with the implementation of the ACFTA, bilateral trade and investment cross flows between Malaysia and China were expected to increase further.