CREST to Accelerate Malaysia's Economic Growth in E&E Industry

GEORGE TOWN (Penang,Malaysia), June 9 (Bernama) -- The Collaborative Research in Engineering, Science and Technology (CREST) Centre was launched on Saturday by Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Nor Mohamed Yakcop. Set up by the government, CREST is a platform for industry players, academia and government to collaborate and promote research, design and development activities in the electrical and electronics (E&E) sector in Malaysia. Located at science@usm building in Bukit Jambul with 3,000 researchers, the CREST office focuses on the research and development (R&D), talent development and commercialisation to accelerate economic growth of the E&E industry. Industry representative from Avago Technologies, Ooi Boon Chye, said industry players viewed CREST as a key contributor to proliferate more R&D activity in the E&E sector in the region. Present at the launch ceremony were Northern Corridor Implementation Authority (NCIA) Chief Executive Redza Rafiq and Malaysian Industrial Development Authority (MIDA) Chief Executive Officer Noharuddin Nordin. Speaking at a press conference, Nor Mohamed said CREST would enable the industry to move up the value chain to produce higher value-added products and enable companies to collectively develop an E&E cluster. "The rapidly growing and increasingly complex research and innovation process requires high-tech companies to optimise their technology transfer process. "It is clearly not sufficient to solely rely on internal R&D. "Increasingly, companies need strategic cooperation with external research centres of excellence to compete in the global innovation market," he said. The E&E industry is expected to contribute RM90 billion (US$28.3 billion) in gross national income (GNI) and 679,000 jobs by 2020 from RM37 billion (US$11.62 billion) in GNI with 522,000 jobs currently. The NCIA and nine companies which accounted for RM25 billion (US$7.85 billion) in total revenue, RM1.4 billion (US$439.8 million) in R&D expenditure and employing 500,000 workers have signed up to become founder members of CREST. Among the companies are Avago Technologies (M) Sdn Bhd, Altera Corporation (M) Sdn Bhd, Motorola Solutions Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Intel Microelectronics (M) Sdn Bhd, Silterra Malaysia Sdn Bhd and Osram Opto Semiconductors Malaysia Sdn Bhd. -- BERNAMA