A delegation of Asia-Pacific CEO and heads of 10 major US companies will begin a series of meetings in Malaysia with focus on long-term investments in the country and support for increased ASEAN economic integration, local newspaper reported.

The high-level delegation will visit Indonesia and Malaysia and meet with a wide variety of government officials and business leaders, including Prime Minister Najib Razak, Malaysia’s New Straits Times said.

It includes companies from ACE Group, Cigna, the Coca-Cola Company, DuPont, GE, Intel, Medtronic, Monsanto, Procter & Gamble, and UL.

The US is Malaysia’s largest foreign investor, and the companies on this delegation are committed in continuing to build the bilateral trading relationship.

“Our delegation strongly supports Malaysia’s ‘Vision 2020’ goals, which aims to make Malaysia a high-income nation by 2020 and its leadership role as this year’s ASEAN Chairman in the launch of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC),” the paper quoted Marc Mealy, Vice President for Policy of the US-ASEAN Business Council, as saying.

This mission will offer US business support for key areas of integration, including regulatory harmonisation, revival of the e-ASEAN Initiative to secure ASEAN’s position as an ICT hub.

It will also cover human capital development, and the development and training of SMEs through efforts such as the US-ASEAN Business Alliance for Competitive SMEs, a joint project of the Council and USAID.

US businesses are targeting more than 500 million USD in new investments to come into Malaysia over the next three to five years, the paper cited the US-ASEAN Business Council’s source.-VNA