By CHOI TUCK WO

LONDON - An RM800mil($327 million) International Medical University is set to open in Perak next year following a delay caused by the state crisis.

Perak Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Dr Zambry Abdul Kadir said once operational, the university would eventually have an intake of more than 10,000 students.

He said the state government had some equity in the private university, which would be located on a 120ha piece of land at Gua Tempurung near Ipoh.

"Work started about two years ago but it stalled for a while due to the Perak crisis," he said after delivering a talk on "The new Pe-rak: Emerging from the Crisis" at King's College London on Satur-day.

More than 200 Malaysian students attended the session, which was organised jointly by the United Kingdom and Eire Council for Malay-sian Students (Ukec) and Umno UK Club.

Dr Zambry had flown in from the United States where he had previously held discussions with the Harvard Business School and the Massachussets Institute of Techno-logy (MIT) on efforts to forge educational cooperation.

He said the medical university in Perak was undertaken by a local company in collaboration with a consortium of leading medical universities, mostly from India.

"Among them are the University of Madras and MGR Medical Uni-versity," he said, adding the first intake of students was expected ear-ly next year.

He said the first phase in the establishment of the university alone cost about RM300mil but that total investments could go as high as up to RM800mil once it became a full-fledged university.

Dr Zambry said the new university would benefit not just Perakians but also Malaysians because it would enable more people to take up medical courses locally.

He also said he had been meeting investors almost every day, citing the US trip where he had visited the Silicone Valley and spoke to professors and scientists about Perak's economic potential.

"They asked me why Perak when we have only 2.3 million people but I told them I'm talking about a 500 million population market in South-East Asia," he said, adding that he wanted them to use Perak as their launchpad into the Asean Free Trade Area.

Dr Zambry also spoke about his new blueprint called Perak Aman Jaya to restructure the state's economy from one based on agriculture to that based on services.

"The people are fed up with the political crisis. It's time we move ahead with economic development," he said.