This was a key point raised during a town hall meeting on the 2025 budget with E&E industry players, chaired by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and moderated by investment, trade and industry minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz.

Syed Zainal Abidin Syed Tahir, the chairman of semiconductor factory SilTerra, said power outages are happening at an unacceptable rate.

“Such disruptions are detrimental to our industry. Seventy-three outages have happened in the past three years (at Kulim Hi-Tech Park), with 52% of them affecting economic returns. Who do we claim the damages from?

“I don’t want to blame anyone, but there’s surely something we can do. We need to get our act together,” he said at the event, attended by 70 E&E representatives representing 52 companies in Kedah, Penang and Perak.

Anwar said the matter would be brought up in the Cabinet, while Tengku Zafrul said he is aware of it.

An official from the Energy Commission present at the meeting interjected, saying the issue was not of power disruptions per se, but more of power quality. He did not offer any further explanation.

NUR Power is the exclusive power utility firm for Kulim Hi-Tech Park.

Separately, Malaysian Semiconductor Industry Association president Wong Siew Hai called for increased government funding to lower investment risks and improve Malaysia’s competitiveness.

He said the government should provide funding for at least 20% of the industry’s capital expenditure, as done in other countries.

Wong also said foreign engineering students graduating here should be allowed to work in the country.

In reply, Anwar said he was open to the idea, but it would only be considered if no local graduates were available. He said the government had already relaxed entry requirements for many foreign IT talents.

Although he admitted that there were gaps in the country’s E&E ecosystem, compared with other Southeast Asian nations, Anwar said Malaysia had performed better in certain areas.