Perbadanan Pembangunan Perdagangan Luar Malaysia

THURSDAY, 31 JANUARY 2017, KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation (MATRADE) today announced the appointment of Dato’ Wan Latiff Wan Musa as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) with effect from 1st February. He replaces Ir Dr Mohd Shahreen Zainoreen Madros who completed his two-year term as the CEO today. Prior to his appointment, Dato’ Wan Latiff was the Deputy CEO of MATRADE.

A career MATRADE man, Dato’ Wan has been with the organisation since 1997 and has a broad experience in the development of Malaysia’s trade. His leadership roles at MATRADE cover several key functions, including export promotion, strategic planning and management services. Aside from these responsibilities at the head office, Dato’ Wan also served as Trade Commissioner for nine years, during this period he headed MATRADE offices in Cologne, Toronto and New York in consecutive occasions.

Prior to that, he attended a two-year Intensive Education Programme on Tourism at the Rikkyo University, Tokyo and was with Tourism Malaysia. At Tourism Malaysia, he was assigned as Director of its Tokyo office, where he was responsible for successfully promoting tourism services to Japan.

The experience gained over the years in his various job functions at MATRADE is a holistic and comprehensive one for Dato’ Wan Latiff. This empowers his leadership – both in terms of capacity building of Malaysian exporters as well as in engaging foreign buyers of Malaysia’s products and services. As the eighth MATRADE CEO, he aspires to steer MATRADE towards achieving the total trade target of RM2.118 trillion by 2020 set by the Government as stipulated in RMK-11 Mid-Term Review.

Dato’ Wan shared, “I am honoured with the trust given by Minister of International Trade & Industry YB Datuk Darell Leiking as well as all MATRADE Board members led by YBhg Tan Sri Dr. Halim Mohammad. It has been my privilege to serve my country all these years, especially doing what I am passionate about, which is to help make Malaysia be a strong trading nation that is able to break into markets around the world.”

He also thanked Ir Dr. Mohd Shahreen for his years at MATRADE. “On behalf of all MATRADE family, we would like to thank Dr. Shahreen for his contributions in enhancing our strategies and for introducing our organisation’s core values called GRACE,” he shared.

MATRADE as the national export promotion agency is a body under the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). Its main role is to drive the exports of Malaysian products and services to the world. For the past 25 years since its establishment, MATRADE plays a key role in sustaining Malaysia’s trade surplus, which Malaysia has enjoyed for 21th consecutive years.

MATRADE as Malaysia’s export promotion agency offers various facilitation for Malaysian companies in areas such as market intelligence and trade advisory as well as export promotion and capacity building programmes. The agency, under Ministry of International Trade and Industry, has 46 trade offices around the world that function to identify new export opportunities and to connect Malaysian companies with foreign buyers. For more information on MATRADE, please visit www.matrade.gov.my.