OCBC Malaysia, comprising OCBC Bank (Malaysia) Berhad (OCBC Bank) and our Islamic subsidiary OCBC Al-Amin Bank Berhad (OCBC Al-Amin), lauds National Budget 2025.

It is one that the nation will benefit from, with the government’s forward-looking initiatives to reform the economy, steer effective change and ensure the prosperity of the people. It is a People’s Budget that seeks to empower and raise the dignity of the nation.

The 2025 Budget is the highest of all budgets at RM421 billion.

The focus on ensuring the country’s infrastructure development is given top priority, which is a step in the right direction as it paves the way for economic excellence. With the emphasis on ensuring transportation and other infrastructure programmes are implemented smoothly, we believe the country will be moving further along in its quest to becoming a high-income nation.

We are particularly interested to learn that efforts are well underway to make the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone (JS-SEZ) a reality and look forward with anticipation to participating in the initiatives that will be rolled out. We are excited over the to-be-announced special incentives for attracting high quality investments and creating employment that is commensurate with the required expertise for the tasks. We also look forward to the rollout of details pertaining to the Invest Malaysia Facilitation Centre – Johor (IMFC-J) and to undertaking our role as part of the second largest financial services group in the region to help make the ideals become reality. This is because we see the critical role the Johor region plays in economic development for attracting investments from the ASEAN-Greater China region.

The efforts to encourage the use of low carbon technology is yet another of the government's moves in the right direction as we aim to collectively encourage sustainable practices among all Malaysians. In line with OCBC’s aspiration to be Asia’s leading financial services partner for a sustainable future, we welcome the move to introduce carbon tax by the year 2026 which will be channelled to funding research and green technology.

As the parent company to one of the top foreign Islamic banks in the country, OCBC Al-Amin, we look forward to participating in the efforts announced to make the Islamic banking practice of the nation more creative and supporting the development of the halal industry.

As a Bank whose headquarters is in close proximity to the Sultan Abdul Samad building near Dataran Merdeka we were delighted to hear about the effort to restore and raise the value of the building. We look forward to hearing more about the plans and being involved in some way as an active member of the immediate community. This is especially in view of the various community initiatives we sponsor in the vicinity including OCBC Cycle Kuala Lumpur and KL Car-Free Morning.

In sum, we at OCBC Malaysia see National Budget 2025 as continuing from the journey last year to progressively build a prosperous nation while ensuring sustainability and by opening the doors wider to those outside the country to invest here.

Ultimately, National Budget 2025 is one for the rakyat and does well to make good the unity government’s quest to achieve sustainable development and reinvigorate the economy.