KW: The longer the distance between two nations the more exotic, strange and even odd  they seem to each other. What’s odd to you about Ukraine?

Ukraine is a new terrain and new area for me and also for many Malaysians because we are more familiar with Western Europe. We have been colonized over 400 years by the Western powers. And naturally over 400 years we have been exposed to the Western world. To many of us, especially my and some previous generations, Eastern Europe including CIS and Ukraine has always been a forbidden place. It was built within the Soviet bloc, behind the Iron curtain, and we lacked news about this region. Therefore, to those of us who come here almost everything seems a bit odd.

 KW: Malaysia was among the first nations to recognize the independence of Ukraine. On March 3rd, 2012 there will be twenty years of the two countries bilateral relations. What did your government expect and what did it count on, making the decision?

C.T.B.: From the geostrategic point of view, Ukraine is an important country linking Europe and Asia. Besides, it is a very big country within Europe. Therefore, we just cannot ignore it. And naturally our expectations were based on political and security interests. We wanted to forge inclusive political relations.

Having that political background as the foundation of our cooperation, our top priorities in the relations with Ukraine are based on the economic relations perspective. Malaysia is a trading nation, and we look at things from pragmatic point of view. Trade and investment are much easier to forge because they are the low hanging fruits. The other area of priority lies in social-cultural field. What I personally feel is that a lot of Ukrainians still do not know Malaysia very well. And one of my tasks here is to create the awareness of Malaysia, to sell to them our tourism destinations.

KW: Tell us about the present situation in bilateral economic partnership.

C.T.B.: We see Malaysian officials and business people coming to Ukraine quite often. The bilateral trade is consolidating. From January to August this year, trade volume reached about $270 million, and I feel there is still a lot of potential. For the part of Malaysia, every year we organize two groups of Ukrainian business people to go to Malaysia – one in April and another in November to make sure that they are able to discover Malaysian products. Over the years, we have had conducted many visits of high-ranking economic officials (not only trade minister, but ministers of tourism, primary commodities) to come to Ukraine for economic promotional missions. I think in order to have more Malaysians buying Ukrainian products, similar approach and promotional efforts need to be taken from the Ukrainian side, perhaps. In addition, some Malaysian business people are afraid of doing business in the CIS region including Ukraine becausethey are not very clear about the business ethics; therefore, they are a bit skeptical to come forth to do more investment in Ukraine. I can promote Malaysia here but I cannot promote Ukraine back in Malaysia effectively when I am based in Ukraine.

KW: Despite twenty years of friendship, the number of Ukrainian citizens visiting Malaysia is very small – just about three thousand per year. The number of Malaysians coming to Ukraine is even less – 535 last year. Why is it so? What are the reasons – lack of interest, lack of knowledge or bad advertising?

C.T.B.: Lack of knowledge, no promotional efforts on the Ukrainian side, no direct flights – these are some of the reasons why the small number of Malaysians visited Ukraine. But the thing hampering Malaysians from coming to Ukraine most is the visa issue. For instance, if they need to go to EU or other East Asian countries, say,  South Korea, they don’t need visas. I would also say that a lot of Malaysians do not come to this region because of language. When they see inscriptions in Cyrillic the first thing they say is “Russian”. Even if it is written in Greek, it is still “Russian”. They are afraid that when they come here and try to speak not many people can understand them and help when they get into trouble for instance. Perhaps, Ukraine may attract more tourists by adopting more English signboards

KW: TMI Consultancy (a specialized company authorized to promote Malaysia as a tourism destination in the CIS countries) headquarters is situated in Moscow. Don’t you think that such a regional approach is wrong? Especially considering multiplying differences in post-Soviet markets and consumer needs? Is there any prospect of a special Malaysian image-making agency wjrking independently in Ukraine?

C.T.B.: I think – ideally – if you’d like to promote your country it would be good to have a dedicated consultancy agent point at each country that Malaysia has an embassy because tourism is of a big interest to Malaysia. Last year we attracted about 24 million visitors (Malaysia’s population is about 28 million – Ed.). However, we have to have a decision-making process justifiable, viable, and cost-effective when it comes to setting up dedicated promotional agencies. Therefore we cannot have such agencies everywhere.

Ukrainian market is indeed very different from Russian or Kazakh, or Uzbek. To have a dedicated marketing strategy for Ukraine, of course, we need to develop the market, and when the market size is developed, naturally the dedicated promotional part comes in. On this matter I’d like to emphasize that the promotion of Malaysian tourism destinations in Ukraine is not only done by our specialized agency in Moscow, but is also done very much by the embassy here. I have also helped to promote tourism in my own way.

KW: Malaysia is one of the leading electronics producers in the world. How did you succeed in creating the favorable climate for the hi-tech branch development?

C.T.B.: We started our independence as an agricultural economy. We understood that with such a structure of economy you can be rich but you cannot progress. I must say that we do well as an agricultural country – we are the biggest producer of rubber, among the top in producing cocoa and palm oil. We even do well in research of rubber and palm oil technology. But we felt that to move to higher level of economy we need to go to manufacturing and invite foreign investors. Through that philosophy we started to provide favorable business climate to investors.  What is favorable climate? In the early days we invited investors to come and  relocate their industries in Malaysia. We started to focus on electronics. The government set up a Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA), a one-stop agency where investors come and apply all the necessary documents. This agency does all the processing work for them over a short period of time – currently it’s about two weeks. The investors can come back to MIDA later just to collect all the licenses (be it either 15 or 50) and ready to start business. In other words we coordinate among ourselves, we cut out bureaucracy and make life of investors better. The other area in their early days is a tax break. We give them “pioneer status” if they are new. For the first five years they don’t pay any corporate tax. And if they have a value-added and make technology advancement to the industry we extend it another five years. Of course, reducing corporate tax is not the main factor. We also have good infrastructures, such as developing world class highways, airport facilities, ICT (information and computing technologies – ed.). We are also trying to reduce our corruption perception index.