4 April 2023
Impact: Medium
Summary
Referring to the latest announcement by the Expatriate Services Division (ESD) of the Immigration Department of Malaysia, effective 1 April 2023, the projection application process under the ESD is enhanced and simplified where minimal information is required for the submission of the projection application to the Immigration authority.
Prior to this, companies were required to provide very detailed information of the expatriates requiring the projection such as, among others, name, passport number, nationality, job title, salary and job description, in order to justify the projection application.
Companies under the purview of ESD that submitted any projection application prior to 1 April 2023 and yet to receive an outcome to this date must resubmit their projection application to the Immigration authority under the new enhanced system in the ESD portal.
The Detail
Before companies can submit a work pass application i.e. Employment Pass (EP) or Professional Visit Pass (PVP) to ESD, they are required to have the necessary projection number approved by the Immigration authority. Companies requiring projections for the coming year must submit their annual EP and PVP projection applications at the end of every year. Any unutilised projections for a particular year will be forfeited at the end of the year and will not be carried forward to the next year. Should companies require any additional projections throughout the year, an additional application to the Immigration authority can be submitted.
With this latest announcement, companies are no longer required to furnish detailed information of the expatriates requiring the projection in order to justify the projection application to the Immigration authority. Only minimal information such as the number of projections, category of positions and total number of employees (Malaysians and non-Malaysians) must be furnished in the projection application submission. Additional supporting documents which were previously required for projection applications e.g. justification letter, job descriptions and contracts or letters of award are now no longer required to be submitted.
The processing time for the projection application is also now significantly reduced whereby approval is instantly obtained after submission of the projection application to the Immigration authority.
This enhancement of process applies to both EP and PVP projection.
The projection application process for companies under the purview of the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) remains unchanged.
What this means
This new simplified process for projection applications under ESD is a welcome enhancement by the Immigration authority as it eliminates the requirement for companies to furnish detailed information for the projection application. This previous requirement was a challenge to companies as the extensive details were usually not available to the companies at the time of applying for projections, which is usually applied a few months ahead of identifying and/or hiring expatriates for specific roles in Malaysia. Companies which could not provide these details to the Immigration authority during the projection application were usually not granted approval of their projection application. This impacted the companies’ workforce management such as, among others, their hiring process and employees’ assignment start dates.
With this new enhancement, it will be easier for companies to obtain and justify the projection numbers necessary to accommodate their business needs in Malaysia. While approval of the projection application is instantly obtained after submission of the projection application, companies are advised to strategise their workforce management ahead of time and take into consideration the projection process into the overall timeline
How we can help
Our team is able to assist you in understanding the projection application requirements in greater detail and applying for your projection applications. In the meantime, our team is closely monitoring the implementation of this new enhanced system in ESD and we will provide you with the relevant updates from time to time.
Contact us
For a deeper discussion on the above, please reach out to your Vialto Partners point of contact, or alternatively:
Further information on Vialto Partners can be found here: www.vialtopartners.com
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