Abstract

Tengku Zafrul Aziz, Chairman of the Malaysian Investment Development Authority and former Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry will speak to how, in a world of rising trade barriers, Malaysia can safeguard its prosperity. He will show how Malaysia would need to do so by ensuring that growth is meaningful, not just reflected in GDP figures, and how affordability, equitable wealth-sharing, and socio-economic stability can be achieved through “smarter capitalism”. He will highlight how advances in technology—digital platforms, automation, and green innovation—can reduce living costs, expand access to opportunities, and enable a fairer distribution of wealth between business owners, shareholders, and workers. By harnessing innovation responsibly, Malaysia can build resilience, strengthen inclusivity, and secure prosperity for all Malaysians in a volatile global economy.

About the Speaker

Zafrul Aziz is Chairman of the Malaysian Investment Development Authority. He was previously Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry (2022 to 2025), and Minister of Finance (2020 – 2022), after spending 22 years in banking and finance. At MITI, he drove manufacturing growth, trade expansion, and investment attraction. During his tenure as MITI Minister, Malaysia recorded its highest ever approved investment figure at RM378.5 billion (2024), and trade at RM2.879 trillion (2024), and jumped 11 notches to rank 23rd in the World Competitiveness Ranking 2025.

During Malaysia’s ASEAN Chairmanship in 2025, MITI under his leadership advanced 18 Priority Economic Deliverables to strengthen regional integration, trade, and cooperation in emerging sectors like Electric Vehicles and Artificial Intelligence. That same year, he was appointed to lead negotiations on US reciprocal tariffs, which resulted in a reduction of tariff from 25% to 19% for Malaysia, with exemptions secured for more than 1,700 tariff lines and the securing of a RM200-billion US export market.

As Malaysia’s Finance Minister during the Covid pandemic and its aftermath, he oversaw and rolled out eight stimulus packages, the National Recovery Plan, and three budgets that eventually helped Malaysia’s GDP rebound by 8.7% in 2022—the highest in ASEAN in over two decades.

Passionate about sports and youth development, he is President of the Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM). He has also launched youth-focused programmes such as the ASEAN Scholarship and Be$MART financial literacy scheme at CIMB Group, and raised  funds for various charities. He is an Honorary Captain in Malaysia’s Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve.