Monday 21 April 2014

Malaysian Companies Invited To Bid For UK Armed Forces Contracts

Malaysian Companies Invited To Bid For UK Armed Forces Contracts 

KUALA LUMPUR, April 20 (Bernama)

The United Kingdom (UK) Ministry of Defence (MOD) is inviting Malaysian companies to participate in bids to supply for the UK Armed Forces.

"We want to see more Malaysian companies looking to the UK for future market. We seen tremendous development in the industrial sector in defence and security and we see no reason why Malaysian companies should not be in the UK," Senior Spokesperson UK Trade and Investment for Defence and Security Organisation (UKTI DSO) Adam Thomas told Bernama in an interview.

Thomas was speaking on behalf of Minister for Defence Equipment, Support and Technology Philip Dunne who was in Kuala Lumpur for the 14th Defence Services Asia Exhibition and Conference.


"We developed a new website, www.contracts.mod.uk where Malaysian companies can register their capabilities and tell us what they do. We can look at your company and see if they are suitable to supply for our armed forces or we can give them advice on areas that they need to develop in order to do so," he said.

Thomas said companies can apply online for a publication called "Contracts Bulletin" that lists every contract available "from a dollar to a billion dollars".

He added over 40 per cent of UK defence budget is allocated to foreign companies.

"We also have one of the most open procurement system in the world and there is no barriers to Malaysian market at all," he added.

In the financial year 2012/13, the UK MOD spent approximately 18.5 billion with third parties to buy and support all the equipment and services that the armed forces need to operate effectively.

"If you do supply to our armed forces there would be a very, very good opportunity to supply to other armed forces around the world," he said.

Thomas said UKTI DSO was also very keen to engage with the modernisation of Malaysian Armed Forces, cyber and security sector as well as education.

The UK MOD launched its 10-Year 160bn Equipment Plan, setting out its forecast expenditure plans to deliver and support the equipment required to meet the armed forces objectives.

Thomas said the country sees Malaysia very much as an equal partner as Malaysia has similar challenges to UK.

"You want to protect your borders, you want to protect against drug smuggling and illegal immigration. We got similar challenges. We are also very keen to talk to you about your doing work on the Malacca Straits and we can share philosophies on that," he said.

Thomas added this is a really good way of working together in the future and learn from each other.

"More importantly what we see as a success is much more joint ventures between Malaysia and UK companies, not on the amount of equipment we sell but the amount of joint ventures we had," he said.

In the cyber sector, Thomas said one of the things that UK has learned from the last two years were the cyber threats across financial and defence sector.

"We launched a new cyber security strategy in the UK. Another area is of course the 2012 Olympic Games where we learnt a lot of lessons.

"We know Malaysia is very keen to engage in future games and large events, and again we are keen to share some of the technologies we learnt during the Olympics. Everything including biometrics to airport security," he added.

Meanwhile, he said BAE Systems has also invested a significant amount of money to sponsor Malaysian students to study in the UK.

"We think that's a great credit to the company who sees this country as a rather long term investment than a short term investment," he said, adding that UK sees a real crossover with Malaysia, not just in defence and security, but also in education.

"Malaysia has some wonderful ideas on its future and we in the UK want to make sure that we are going to be part of that as well," he said.

-- BERNAMA

0 comments :

Post a Comment