GE bullish on business growth in Malaysia

In green or renewable energy, GE is talking with several Malaysian and Indonesian companies in the development of biomass fuel from oil palm waste.

KUALA LUMPUR: New York Stock Exchange-listed General Electric Company (GE), which has so far invested over RM1 billion in Malaysia, is confident that the country's government and economic transformation programmes would fuel the growth of its businesses here.

GE chief executive officer Asean Stuart L Dean said he is bullish on the country's economic growth as well as the government's plans.

"I am a big fan of the Prime Minister (Datuk Seri Najib Razak). I love the initiatives that he has done such as the 1Malaysia. This has been a good one," he told Business Times in an interview recently.

Dean also commended the programmes implemented by Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Idris Jala when he was with Malaysia Airlines as well as the current tasks as the chief executive officer of Performance Management and Delivery Unit.

"It's like putting an operation plan of what companies are doing on top of the government strategic plan.

"I think it's the only time I have ever seen something quite like that from a government, like putting in place the KPIs (key performance indicators), measuring the people's performance and doing the projects both public and private sectors," he said.

GE, which has been in Malaysia since 1975, has presence in the country's healthcare, aviation, oil and gas, energy, power generation and transportation sectors.

"In short, we do all those infrastructure areas. In the aviation, we are really fortunate to have two great airline customers, AirAsia and Malaysia Airlines.

"We have great power generation customers in Tenaga Nasional Bhd and several independent power producers, KTM Bhd for our locomotive, and healthcare business is growing nicely in Malaysia," Dean said.

He said GE has embarked on the national Diagnostic Services Nexus (DSN) programme, one of the Entry Point Projects outlined under the Economic Transforma-tion Programme.

Launched in March 2011, Dean said the DSN, which was later known as the national radiology hub, is the nation's teleradiology centre that will link up all the radiologists into a national pool to balance domestic workload between the public and private sectors. The hub will link radiologists in big cities with those in rural and remote areas.

"We are excited about the project ... we can work in Malaysia and then can sell to Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam in future," he said.

The DSN project comprises three phases, with Phase 1 as the initial set-up in September-December 2011; Phase 2 being the domestic workload rationalisation starting 2012 through 2013; and the international insourcing, which is in Phase 3.

Dean said GE believes that it can grow all of its businesses in the country, especially the aviation business.

"For instance, we received order from AirAsia last year, the engines for 200 of A320 aircraft, with delivery starting in 2016.

"Malaysia Airlines is also a great customer of our engines.

He added that GE and Malaysia Airlines have jointly set up a maintenance, repair and overhaul facility in Subang.

Dean also said that the oil and gas industry offers enormous potential for GE to explore business activities in Malaysia.

"We are the only company that does integrated turbine compression train that can be found in offshore platforms or liquefied natural gas facilities," he claimed, adding that Petronas is GE's major customer in the local oil and gas sector.

In the transportation sector, Dean said GE is looking at expanding its locomotive engine business, particularly with the implementation of the double tracking system in Malaysia.

In green or renewable energy, Dean said GE is currently talking with several Malaysian and Indonesian companies in the development of biomass fuel from oil palm waste.

GE expects to make an announcement on the project this year.