Country Garden’s (2007) Forest City project in Malaysia will become a duty-free zone. Malaysia said it will implement a new zero-tax policy for family offices based in Forest City, with a tax rate as low as 5% for fintech companies or foreign payment system operators if they relocate there.
The Malaysia government pointed out that Forest City will become the first place in the country to implement zero tax rate for family offices, and the new policy has a preferential period of 10 years, which is targeted to be implemented in the first quarter of next year, and the family offices need to have at least RM30 million (about 55.61 million Hong Kong dollars) in assets, some of which need to be invested in the Malaysia market and provide employment opportunities for local employees.
It will be implemented from the first quarter of next year
Country Garden began construction of the Forest City project in Johor, Malaysia, in 2016, at a purported $100 billion cost. The project used to attract Chinese buyers with the right of residence in Malaysia, but in 2018, then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad introduced a new policy to restrict Chinese from buying related residences, and developer Country Garden was mired in a debt crisis, and sales of the project have been sluggish in recent years. However, after the new prime minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim took office, he pushed hard for policies to save the project.
