SMIs urged to take advantage of Miti trade Missions New Straits Times (Business Times) Wednesday, October 30, 2002 LOS CABOS (Mexico), Tues: Small- and medium-scale industries (SMIs) should avail themselves to the various trade and investment promotion activities provided by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (Miti) and its agencies. "I believe many SMIs have not realised the benefit of working together with government agencies which I think now are very, very pro-business," said CS Metal Industries (M) Sdn Bhd vice president of group marketing Ting Chau Haung. Ting, who was a member of Miti's trade and investment mission to Toronto, New York and St Louis urged SMIs to take advantage of the networking opportunities that government agencies provide "as sometimes, the connections that SMIs have are quite limited". The eight-day mission, which ended October 21 was led by Datuk Seri Rafidah Aziz. "I have been working with Miti, Malaysian External Trade Development Corp and Malaysia Industrial Development Authority and found that there are a lot of information and links that can be useful." Many SMIs are not aware of, he added. Ting said his company is not a first time participant of the Miti-organised mission. Its participation has paved the way for CS Metal to form joint venture collaboration and has provided exposure to the latest technology that could be applied to its production process, he said. "In this trade and investment mission, we found out that a lot of SMIs (in North America) are interested to move their manufacturing operations to Malaysia. "One of the companies had invited me to travel down to Philadelphia to look at their factories," he said. Ting revealed that he had accepted the invitation and made a short overnight trip to Philadelphia to visit the plant. The owner is now keen on shifting some of the company's production lines to Malaysia he said. He added that there were also plans for the US company to visit his company in Malaysia as a follow-up and "we are going to progress from there". The Klang-based CS Metal is a contract manufacturing company with a fully-integrated service that ranges from design to stamping, plastic injection and original equipment manufacturing job. The company, which last year made over RM200 million in turnover, has several well-known Japanese electrical and electronics manufacturers as its clients. - Bernama Copyright © The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad, Balai Berita 31, Jalan Riong, 59100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia