Dr Mahathir has high hopes for the mutimedia city.

The Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohammed, has opened a new multimedia garden city known as Cyberjaya which he says will be the nerve centre of the country_s high-technology development. The latest of Malaysia_s prestigious mega-projects will have cost an estimated $15bn by the time it is completed in the next millennium. Designed to be the Malaysian answer to Silicon Valley, it will be intelligent, high-tech, low density and environmentally friendly. For the moment Cyberjaya, situated 40km south of the capital, is still a dusty building site and most of its inhabitants are immigrant Bangladeshi and Indonesian construction workers. But it does boast world class infrastructure and high profile international companies, including computer giant Microsoft, have decided to locate themselves there. Many have been attracted by generous tax incentives offered by the Malaysian Government. The developers say the vision behind the new city is one which fuses man_s technological ingenuity with nature_s bounty.The city lies at the heart of Malaysia_s so-called Multimedia Super-Corridor (MSC), with the soaring heights of the Petronas Towers - the world_s tallest building - at one end and the new Kuala Lumpur International Airport at the other. The corridor covers some 750 square kilometers (300 square miles) and is wired with the latest fibre-optic technology. The MSC will also be home to Malaysia_s new administrative capital, Putrajaya, which is also under construction. Dr Mahathir sees the project as being the key to Malaysia_s entry into developed world status by the year 2020 - a concept he calls Vision 2020. At the opening ceremony he said multimedia technology would be the engine to achieve the required economic growth.