Beating financial crisis an outstanding achievement, says Malaysian PM

PUTRAJAYA: Steering Malaysia safely out of the global financial crisis is the country's biggest success this year, said Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

The Prime Minister said the success was no mere feat and attributed it to the support from the civil service personnel.

"It is an outstanding achievement, when other nations struggled and some succumbed to financial pressure, we recorded a moderately high growth.

"We have been able to carry out developments, taking care of the people's well-being and having socio-economic programmes while the national transformation agenda went on smoothly and effectively.

"This feat is not mine alone but all of us collectively and I would like to thank you all for helping the Government to achieve this," he said yesterday.

Najib was addressing officers and personnel of the Prime Minister's Department at the department's monthly assembly here.

He called on Malaysians to ensure that the upward momentum continued and that peace and stability of the country were well protected.

"We must strengthen our (economic) resilience against the known or unknown enemies," he said

Later in a his opening remarks at a meeting with some 20 eminent expatriate corporate leaders, Najib announced the setting up of an Expatriate Services Division to further enhance initiatives in attracting top foreign talents.

"The division will be rolled out in phases by the first quarter of next year providing integrated and seamless services, with a system and infrastructure upgrade, process streamlining and customer centric facilitation and services.

"We have formed a joint working committee headed by the Home Affairs Minister, the Immigration Department and Talent Corp, to coordinate with relevant agencies to develop further innovation in immigration policy and services," he said.

Najib later handed the Residence Pass-Talent (RP-T) offer letters to the corporate leaders.

The RP-T was introduced in April last year and have so far been issued to more than 1,000 top foreign talents.

It is issued on a personal-to-holder basis and enables foreign talent to live and work in Malaysia for up to 10 years and is renewable.