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Belanjawan 2027 memperkenalkan sukuk kerajaan bertoken pertama Malaysia bagi memperluas akses pelaburan kepada rakyat. Mampukah inovasi berasaskan blockchain ini mengubah landskap pelaburan negara, menarik generasi muda dan memperkukuh kedudukan Malaysia sebagai hab kewangan Islam digital?
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00:01Malaysia's Belanjawan 2027 has introduced a groundbreaking initiative with the announcement of the country's first tokenized government sukuk,
00:10allowing Malaysians to participate directly in investments that were traditionally dominated by institutional investors.
00:17Even more notably, investors may be able to choose whether their funds support national priorities such as education, healthcare or
00:26social welfare,
00:27signalling new approach to public participation in nation-building.
00:31As the government embraces blockchain technology to broaden financial inclusion, questions remain over whether tokenization can truly democratize investment,
00:42attract new generations of investors, improve financial literacy and potentially reshape how governments raise funds in the future.
00:51To explore the opportunities and challenges of this initiative, we speak to our guest today, Martin Wersma, CEO of Mazira.
01:00I want to say thank you very much. I hope I pronounced it correctly again.
01:03Yeah, it's pretty good. Salamat pagi. Great to be here.
01:06It's a very honor to have you here also to discuss this.
01:10And around post-discussion of Belanjawan 2027, usually we will bring focus to a lot of aspects.
01:16But talking about democratizing investment or simply digitizing it, maybe you can share with the Belanjawan 2027 recent announcement, what
01:27was your early reaction?
01:29Well, to address your question directly, it's actually both.
01:31I guess that the digitization is also part of it and democratization as well.
01:36So the digitization part would be more on the institutional side.
01:40So as it goes now, it is going to be faster.
01:45It's going to be cheaper. So that's more on the institutional side.
01:48But the fractionalization of Sukuk is actually democratizing in a way that it can now also reach the Malaysian population.
01:55Because like from all outstanding Sukuk, one third of it is by Malaysia.
02:01So it's huge. Malaysia is dominating this market, even though the Malaysians themselves never hold the actual Sukuk.
02:08Because the entry at this point is usually around 10 million ringgit.
02:14It's being auctioned out to banks.
02:16Private bankers then cut it up into 250,000 type of pieces.
02:20And now with fractionalizing it using blockchain technology, you can actually push it out to the price of a cup
02:29of coffee.
02:29So it can now be owned by Malaysians.
02:33All right. This is definitely the opportunities that we need to embrace moving forward, especially for Malaysians.
02:38And this is some of the approach and one of the strategies for letting citizens to choose how they fund
02:47this.
02:48And looking at one of the most unique features announced is the ability for investors to choose whether their fund
02:53support areas such as education, healthcare or social welfare.
02:57How significant is this concept in encouraging greater public participation and creating even a stronger connection between citizens and national
03:08development?
03:09Yeah, yeah, exactly.
03:10Well, this is what actually excites me most from the budgeting announcements from the 9th of October.
03:15Is that now you can picture a hospital, for example.
03:19If a government needs to build a hospital, they can hand out the certificates and people can now invest, co
03:27-invest in it.
03:28So it will be an extra layer.
03:29Retail will be an extra layer.
03:30It can be funded by banks, private institutions, and then you also have retail.
03:35So, for example, if you want to send your kid to a better school, you can do both.
03:43You can invest in building new schools, for example.
03:46And at the same time, the profits of it are reinvested and are saved for sending your kid to college
03:55eventually.
03:56So it's a pretty nice mechanism that if you look at the economy, how it normally functions, you have taxes.
04:02And taxes fund economic growth, supporting builds of roads, etc.
04:07But it's always very indirect.
04:09You have to choose someone to vote for.
04:12And hopefully in the five years, you will allocate your taxes, the budget, with your own beliefs.
04:19And now all of a sudden, you can vote directly.
04:22You can put your money where your mouth is.
04:24If you believe in something, you can invest in it.
04:26And you can grow together with the Malaysian economy.
04:30That's quite exciting to me.
04:31This is the transformation that we have seen within the financial industry.
04:36And also talking about investments, opportunities, and also the ultimate question is,
04:43can tokenizer could attract young investors especially?
04:47Because young Malaysians are already comfortable with digital financial platforms.
04:51But tokenizer could encourage more of them to start investing, especially for those who have never invested?
04:59Well, I believe it's quite important for the young population.
05:03Like what you see now is 1.5 billion was in investment scams in 2025.
05:111.5 billion in total.
05:13So you see that the Malaysian population and the young generation have a very high risk appetite.
05:18But they lack the knowledge.
05:21So education is a very important part of this one.
05:25Sorry, I forgot the question.
05:27I mean, like talking about tokenizer, so cool, how can we attract more people to invest,
05:34especially for the people who have never invested because this is something new for them
05:39and definitely need a different approach from what they're used to, especially from the traditional platforms.
05:44Absolutely.
05:45Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
05:46Well, I believe that with education, you can still go up the risk chain.
05:52You can still search for risk, but the foundation of your investments has to be sound and future-proof.
06:00For the sukuk, for example, and I'm speculating here, I don't know the exact percentages.
06:04The government didn't announce it yet.
06:05I expect it to be between 2% to 4% annual profit.
06:10So if you, as a simple calculation example, if you start with your first job and you manage to save
06:16500 ringgit from every payday, every salary,
06:20that's already 50,000 by the time you get married, and that's already 700,000 ringgit by the time you
06:27retire.
06:28And besides these long-term investments, you can also go for these, this is not financial advice, obviously,
06:35but you can still go for your YouTube, your favorite YouTuber and the next shiny thing,
06:42but do it responsibly and know what the risks are.
06:45Otherwise, it's just exposure, right, without knowing what you get into.
06:49I also want to add a blockchain into our conversations.
06:53Talking about blockchain is often associated with crypto, and this often creates confusions among investors.
07:01And when it's also linked to cryptocurrency like bitcoins, how can we help Malaysians especially understand the difference of investing
07:10in tokenized sukuk with also confidence?
07:13Right, yeah.
07:14And it's, to be honest, it's quite complicated.
07:16I've been in the blockchain space since 2013, so that's 13 years, and I'm still struggling.
07:22There's a lot going on also.
07:24But it's important to understand that bitcoin is essentially what one website is to the internet.
07:31So we are talking about a protocol.
07:34We are talking about infrastructure.
07:35This is also what is being recognized globally, like the New York Stock Exchange is also tokenizing.
07:41Countries around us are tokenizing.
07:44So it is new plumbing for a financial sector.
07:48Because what we see now, also even the QR codes and the QR payments and the Ys of this world,
07:53they all build on infrastructure that was built in 1977.
07:58Right?
07:58But that old plumbing is now about to be disrupted.
08:02And if you look at technology, I would say in general, it goes in several different stages.
08:08It starts with replacing the old with marginal improvements.
08:12So a little bit faster, a little bit cheaper.
08:15Then the second phase would be creating opportunities that weren't possible before.
08:20So that's the fractionalized sukuk, but also fractionalized real estate, for example.
08:26And then the third one is connecting all these markets with each other.
08:30So if Europe is building this, the U.S. is building this, Singapore is building this, Malaysia is also building
08:37this now.
08:37We can interconnect these financial markets with each other with the highest efficiency.
08:42So you can even have a sukuk product invested by a European citizen or from my home country, from the
08:48Netherlands.
08:49Someone from Amsterdam can buy 10 euros worth of sukuk here in Malaysia.
08:52And then the last part, the final stage, is opening up possibilities that we cannot even comprehend yet.
09:00So that's, for example, also agentic AI.
09:05It's like if you are an AI agent, you cannot open up a bank account, but you need to interact
09:11with the economy at some point.
09:14But all of this comes together with great risk and great opportunities.
09:18That's why I'm a big proponent of the government also stepping in, because the industry players, such as our company,
09:25but also the banks and also the regulator, need to take part in this.
09:30Because, in my opinion, the Malaysian financial sovereignty is also at stake.
09:36This is definitely taking back from infrastructure, how we upgrade and straight into how we cooperate and collab in the
09:45future moving forward.
09:47And also we want to ensure that financial inclusions also maintain the balance between financial literacy.
09:54Making an investment more accessible is one thing, but ensuring the investor understands risk and return is another thing.
10:01So I want to ask you directly if, Martin, does Malaysia currently have the financial literacy?
10:07But you have already mentioned previously that we do have high appetite risk, but also just a bit of probably
10:15currently lack of knowledge or information of getting there.
10:20But do you think how can we, from the current situation right now, with what we have, with what we
10:27can do in the future, how can Malaysians upgrade or increase their financial literacy in order to support the wider
10:35participation within the products, just like Sukkot tokenized?
10:38Yeah. Well, if I take it one step back, is the generation, the Gen Z of this world is the
10:44fastest growing investor cohort anywhere in the world.
10:47So this generation, 30% of them already invest during their studies against 6% when it was the boomer
10:56generation in that same age group.
10:58So this is, they are fast growing, but they're also learning on TikTok and they're learning through YouTube.
11:06So this group, this very large group needs to be educated.
11:10And luckily, it is also now converging together with the arrival of AI, right?
11:15So we need to educate them and to create a new generation of smart investors that can grow together with
11:24Malaysia.
11:25And that would be the goal.
11:26And because of AI, we can now personalize this education, implementing it inside of the tools.
11:32That's also some of the things that we do within the company, implementing it so that we educate along the
11:37way on risk, on what is this product in the first place,
11:40without this complicated financial language, because it's also complicated.
11:46And then deploying it to millions at the same time because of the use of AI.
11:52Just look at your, like, simple chatbots, for example.
11:55That would be the goal.
11:59Something that we hope for.
12:01Also, we are at the last of our session.
12:04But before I ask you, or maybe it's too early to ask you, what's next after Sukuk?
12:08But we understand that we are here right now with Sukuk.
12:10And maybe in the future, there is something else, something new, something better.
12:14But beyond Sukuk, what comes next?
12:16Could the successful rollout of tokenized Sukuk could also drive tokenization of other assets, such as real estate infrastructure projects?
12:26I'm sorry, but we left in less than two minutes.
12:29Maybe you can explain to us, maybe simplify and wrap it up for us.
12:34Yeah, okay, that's good to know.
12:36Well, you mentioned great examples.
12:39I think real estate is coming next.
12:40You saw that tokenization was from wholesale, is now moving to retail because of this announcement.
12:46So we can expect from real estate to building solar farms to building also water barriers, for example, in the
12:55regions that it is relevant.
12:57But if I look at our own research and what you can also see with Tawaruk and with Mudaraba and
13:03with Farid on chain, like all of these Islamic innovations can come from Malaysia because we have already been number
13:10one from 140 countries, the number one in Islamic finance innovation from 140 countries for 13 years.
13:20So to wrap it up, I believe it's a very interesting time for Malaysians, for young Malaysians and from any
13:27generation.
13:28And I do appreciate the step that Malaysia is taking forward with this one because it's quite innovative and not
13:36a lot of countries did this before them.
13:39Thank you so much.
13:41Thank you so much.
13:41Tokenized Sukuk, definitely from our discussion, could open a new chapter in how Malaysians invest and contribute to the nation's
13:49developments.
13:49But the real breakthrough isn't technology alone.
13:52Of course, it's making investment actually more accessible, creating, building a public trust and even giving every ringgit a greater
13:59value.
14:00Thank you again, Martin Rossema, CEO of Mazira, for joining us today.
14:05Hope to see you again in the future to talk about the future of financial again.
14:09Thank you very much.
14:10And all of our discussion here will be featured in astroawani.com and across all social media platforms.
14:15Please stay tuned with us as Niaga Awani.