By Jeremy Grant in Singapore
When Tina Ward, a Singaporean mother of two, and her British husband realised they were outgrowing their cramped, government-built apartment in Singapore, they took a gamble.
Instead of trying to find bigger accommodation in the island city-state, the Wards looked across the Singapore Strait to abandoned palm oil plantations on the southern tip of Peninsular Malaysia where land goes for a fraction of what it does on the Singaporean side of the border.
Now, four years later, the family lives in a seven-bedroom mansion with a swimming pool in a community populated by expatriate escapees from Singapore, which is itself just a 30-minute drive away.
“It’s the best decision we made in our lives,” Mrs Ward says.
The Wards were early settlers in Ledang Heights, part of a huge special economic zone called Iskandar that spans a 2,200 sq km area three times the size of Singapore and roughly the size of Luxembourg.
Iskandar is one of over a dozen big-ticket projects under the Malaysian government’s so-called economic transformation programme, designed to help attract higher-value industries and boost foreign investment in the country.
The progress made so far in redeveloping the palm oil plantation is likely to be highlighted by Najib Razak, the country’s prime minister, ahead of a general election due within two months. The prime minister has boasted of his government’s record in attracting inward investment.
The development of new residential and corporate space will also benefit tiny Singapore, where rising costs are hitting some companies and residents hard. Iskandar, said one consultant, could eventually be for Singapore what New Jersey is to New York’s high-cost Manhattan.
Launched in 2006, Iskandar will become a metropolis of 3m people by 2025, policy makers hope, filled with privately funded industry, hospitals, schools and plenty of parks.