Special Economic Zones in the OIC Region:
Learning from Experience
76
In addition, Penang is home to some of the world’s top EMS companies including Benchmark
Electronics, Flex, Jabil, Plexus and Sanmina-Sci. A number of the world’s largest LED producers
are also based in Penang such as Osram, Broadcom, Lumileds and CREE.
Penang has also attracted significant investment from the medical devices sector and is now
home to approximately one third of medical companies in Malaysia (55 out of a total of 190
companies). In 2016 Penang contributed over RM5 billion of total value of medical devices
export from Malaysia. Some of the major medical devices investors include St Jude Medical,
Braun, Ambu, Haemonetics, Toshiba, Agilent Technologies and Symmetry Medical.66
A recent focus for Penang has been promotion of investment from Global Business Services
(GBS), Shared Services and Outsourcing (SSO) and IT sectors. In total there are now more than
40 GBS and SSO companies operating in Penang of which the vast majority (~80%) are captive
based companies. It is estimated that in total more than 8,000 high value jobs have been created,
with the majority created within the financial and accounting, engineering and IT sectors. In
2017, Luxoft, a leading provider of software development services and innovative IT solutions
opened a Centre of Excellence (CoE) at Wawasan Open University and an ‘Automotive Software
University’ in Penang. The company will invest a total of $55.6 million over the next five years
in human capital and technology.
Figure 13 – Penang GBS / SSO / IT Sector Focus – %. Companies
Source: Invest Penang Interviews (2017)
66 Invest Penang interview with BuroHappold 2017
1%
1%
1%
2%
3%
3%
4%
6%
6%
6%
8%
10%
13%
16%
20%
Global Procurement Services
Service & Support Shared Services
Big Data Analysis
Procurement
Business Process Outsourcing
Technical Services and Maintenance
Supply Chain Management
Information Technology Outsourcing
Human Resource
Customer Service Support
Process Design & Development
Process Design & Accounting
Finance & Accounting
Software Development
Information Technology