Kuala Lumpur, Nov 7: Malaysia, which has steered its economy from commodities to computer production, is doggedly pursuing a high-tech future through an ambitious multimedia business zone.

Three years after it was conceived, the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) is gradually taking shape with more than 60 companies signed up to research, make and sell multimedia-linked products and services.

The 15-by-50-km (nine-by-30-mile) site is being carved out of old rubber plantations and hills.

From a fuzzily grandiose proposition, the MSC is also beginning to be measured in dollars and cents.

Malaysia is sparing no expense -- even in its economic troubles -- to provide the infrastructure. And determined to make information technology a national goal, the project is being pushed ahead even while others are being delayed.

Racked by a regional financial turbulence, the Malaysian ringgit has sunk as much as 38 per cent against the US dollar, while its stocks have shed about 46.5 per cent this year.

The country expects to spend about $10 billion over the next 10 to 15 years for basics including a 2.5-to-10-gigabit broadband telecommunications network, said Multimedia Development Corp executive chairman Othman Yeop Abdullah in a recent interview.

By December 1998, about 10 companies are expected to be operating at the site, which stretches south of the capital Kuala Lumpur to a new federal centre and international airport now under construction.

By the fifth year of operation, Malaysia could expect to reap $25 billion from the MSC, Othman said.The MSC has outlined seven so-called "flagship applications" of activities: electronic government, smart schools, telemedicine, smart cards, research and development clusters, borderless marketing centres and world-wide manufacturing webs.

Malaysia is dangling a 10-point "Bill of Guarantees" to participants as a carrot, promising tax breaks, unrestricted employment of skilled foreign workers, freedom of ownership and no censorship of the Internet.

It has also passed landmark cyberlaws governing intellectual property protection.

This is an area of deep concern to many high-tech companies which jealously guard proprietary technology and battle counterfeiting of products.

The idea is "build it, and they will come", but so far foreigners have not been rushing in.

Although the denizens of Silicon Valley were among the most aggressively courted by prime minister Mahathir Mohamad -- the project's main cheerleader -- applicants from the US represent just about nine per cent of the total of 150 received.

That lags local companies at 35.3 per cent, and Europe at 11.3 per cent.Even companies that are represented on the MSC's high-profile international advisory panel of some 30 members are still in the feeling-out stage.

US-based Silicon Graphics Inc, a maker of high-end workstations, whose chairman Robert Bishop became an adviser last August, is not yet signed up as an MSC member although it has applied.

Silicon Graphics Malaysia's branch manager Abdul Wahab Yusoff told Reuters the company is collaborating with local firms involved in systems integration or value-added reselling, and which are themselves MSC companies, "to provide expertise and technology" for the project.

For some companies, the attraction of the MSC is both as a customer and as a future business site. Lotus Development, a dominant US maker of messaging software, has won contracts to supply its Notes and Domino products to MSC developers.

The International Business Machines Corp unit will invest 10 million ringgit ($2.94 million) for MSC-related projects over the next two years, including an education centre as well as software research and development labs.

With the help of foreign companies, Malaysia has big aspirations of becoming not just a seller of electronic goods but a high-tech inventor and innovator, Mahathir has said.

In a glitzy televised speech in October about information technology, the gadget-loving premier urged his 22 million countrymen to embrace the new science, predicting it could boost gross domestic product per capita by four times in 20 to 25 years.

"This will enable Malaysians to enjoy the quality of life that is on par with those of developed countries," Mahathir said.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.