The map
14 agencies. None of them talk to each other.
A single foreign-owned setup touches every body on this page. They sit in four separate arms of government, each with its own forms, its own clock, and no obligation to tell the others what it has decided. The failures we get called in to fix almost never happen inside one of these — they happen in the gaps between them.
The dependency graph
Four tracks, and an order you cannot rearrange.
Corporate registration
Nothing in the other three tracks can begin until this one has produced a registered entity.
Municipal licensing
Local, not federal. Which council applies is decided by the address and nothing else, and their requirements differ from each other.
Labour
Runs on a monthly cycle once triggered, entirely independent of the annual corporate calendar.
Immigration
Assessed on the company first and the person second — the order most employers get backwards.
Select any agency to see what has to exist before it, and what cannot proceed until it is done. Nothing here is a checklist — it is a dependency graph, and the expensive mistakes come from running a parallel branch in sequence.
Where it breaks
The gaps are the expensive part.
Each of these bodies does its own job competently. What none of them does is tell you that another one is about to become your problem. SSM will incorporate a company whose intended activity the local council will not license at the address you have already leased. The council will license premises for a business whose expatriate quota was never going to support the team you planned to put in them.
Nobody is at fault in either case. The information simply does not cross between the tracks, and the person holding all four pieces is you — usually for the first time, usually from another country, and usually against a date that has already been committed to.
Two consequences follow, and they account for most of the lost time we see. The first is sequencing: some of these approvals genuinely depend on each other and some only appear to, and running an independent branch in sequence adds its full duration to your timeline for no reason. The second is irreversibility: a lease signed, a capital figure set, or a sign fabricated before the relevant body has been consulted is not a delay — it is money spent twice.
Every body, in full
What each one actually decides.
Corporate registration
Who the company is: its existence, its tax identity, and any federal status or accreditation it holds.
- SSMdefinition
- Incorporates the company and holds the register. Every other approval on this page asks to see what SSM issued.
- LHDN, MDEC, MOF registration, CIDB, DBKL, MBPJ, MPS, DBP, EPF, SOCSO, ESD cannot proceed until it is done.
- LHDNdefinition
- Corporate tax file, employer tax registration, and the annual return that runs on the financial year rather than the incorporation date.
- Requires SSM first.
- MDECdefinition
- Grants Malaysia Digital status to genuinely digital businesses, which changes both the tax position and the hiring position.
- Requires SSM first.
- MOF registrationdefinition
- Registers the company as a supplier to government, without which most public tenders are closed to you.
- Requires SSM first.
- CIDBdefinition
- Grades construction contractors G1 to G7. The grade caps the value of work you may tender for, whatever your capability.
- Requires SSM first.
Municipal licensing
Where the company may operate: the specific premises, the activity carried on there, and what may be displayed outside.
- DBKLdefinition
- Business premises licensing for Kuala Lumpur addresses, assessed against the specific unit rather than the company.
- Requires SSM first.
- MBPJdefinition
- The same function for Petaling Jaya addresses, on its own forms and its own terms.
- Requires SSM first.
- MPSdefinition
- The same function again for Subang Jaya. Three councils, three processes, decided by which side of a boundary your unit sits on.
- Requires SSM first.
- DBPdefinition
- Language and prominence rules for signage. A separate approval from the premises licence, and the one foreign brands discover after the sign is made.
- Requires SSM first.
Labour
How the company employs: role approvals, statutory contributions, and the employer obligations that follow the first hire.
- JTKSMdefinition
- Approves the specific role before a pass can be applied for — the organisational chart and the written case for hiring from abroad.
- Requires ESD first. MYXpats Centre cannot proceed until it is done.
- EPFdefinition
- Retirement contributions for employees, employer and employee share, remitted monthly from the first payroll.
- Requires SSM first.
- SOCSOdefinition
- Employment injury and invalidity coverage, on its own monthly cycle alongside EPF and tax deduction.
- Requires SSM first.
Immigration
Who may work here: the company's quota to employ foreign nationals, and each individual pass issued against it.
- ESDdefinition
- Sets the company's expatriate quota. Assessed on the company — its capital, activity and local headcount — not on anyone you want to hire.
- Requires SSM first. JTKSM cannot proceed until it is done.
- MYXpats Centredefinition
- Issues and endorses the pass itself. Approval and endorsement are separate events, and only the second one lets someone work.
- Requires JTKSM first.
Deliberately absent from this page: fees, processing times and thresholds. Those are set by each body and revised, and a stale figure here would be worse than none. What does not change much is who decides what, and what waits on what — which is the part worth planning around. For the sequence that applies to your situation, start here.
Get started
You only have to deal with one of them.
We hold the relationships across all four tracks, so the coordination between them is our problem rather than yours. Tell us what you're setting up and we'll map which of these you actually touch.