Johor Bahru: Five major investment projects have been fully facilitated through the Invest Malaysia Facilitation Centre Johor (IMFC-J) to date, representing RM16.5 billion in committed investment in the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone (JS-SEZ), said Johor Menteri Besar Datuk Onn Hafiz Ghazi.

According to BERNAMA News Agency, the IMFC-J is currently in active engagement with 47 more investors, with potential investments totaling RM40.1 billion, across key sectors such as manufacturing, data centers, and energy from key markets such as Singapore, China, and South Korea. “In just over two months since its launch, IMFC-J has received more than 300 investor inquiries, with 100 focused on the Forest City Special Financial Zone alone,” he stated.

“But as a facilitator, the job of the IMFC-J is also to convert the very real interest into actual investments, and that is exactly what it has been delivering on,” he said during his opening address at the ‘JS-SEZ Partners Dialogue: Advancing Facilitation’ forum today.

IMFC-J was launched last February in collaboration with federal partners, jointly operated and led by Iskandar Regional Development Authority (IRDA), Invest Johor, and Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA) to remove bottlenecks and fast-track investor journeys within the JS-SEZ.

In the meantime, Onn Hafiz highlighted that Johor has secured RM27.4 billion in total approved investments in the first quarter of 2025 – a record-breaking achievement – as it took the state nine months in 2024 to reach the same milestone. “We currently have an additional RM23 billion in the investment pipeline, expected to materialize by the end of this quarter. If these numbers hold, and we believe they will, Johor will exceed RM50 to RM60 billion in total investments in 2025, surpassing last year’s RM48.5 billion – this will position Johor yet again in the top three investment destinations in Malaysia,” he added.