The major projects of the Johor–Singapore Special Economic Zone in one place, tracked milestone by milestone.
Every status, date and figure links back to a public source: official announcements, filings and news reports.
Nine flagship areas across 3,588 km² of southern Johor. Select a zone here or on the map.
Johor Signal follows the projects that will decide whether the JS-SEZ delivers: the cross-border rail and checkpoints, the data centre and industrial parks, the ports, the water and power behind them, and the policy steps that set the rules.
Each project lists completed milestones with dates, the next expected milestone, and the sources behind them. Investment figures are as reported and may be estimates, commitments or gross development values rather than money spent. Where a date is a target rather than a confirmed event, it says so.
This is an independent tracker. It is not affiliated with the Government of Malaysia, the Johor State Government, IRDA or the Government of Singapore. Status and milestones are best-effort readings of public information and can lag the news. Map boundaries: Natural Earth (public domain); zone markers and rail lines are approximate.
Dr Gabriel Wee Wei En
Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship
Southampton Malaysia Business School
University of Southampton Malaysia
g.w.e.wee@soton.ac.uk
Dr Joseph Hii Wei Siong
Assistant Professor of Finance
Southampton Malaysia Business School
University of Southampton Malaysia
j.w.s.hii@soton.ac.uk
Pick your field. See the sectors growing around you, the roles Malaysian employers struggle to fill, what they pay, and the skills that get you hired.
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Explore the other fields later, follow the source links, and track the JS-SEZ projects on the Projects tab.
Every figure on this page comes from these publications.
Pay figures are national medians across all ages and experience levels; fresh-graduate pay is lower. Shortage occupations are from the national list, not Johor-specific. Suggested next steps are general career advice from Johor Signal, not from the sources.
How the Johor–Singapore Special Economic Zone compares with four other places where a poorer economy sits next to a richer one.
Each pair is measured the same way: output per head, typical pay, people crossing the border and foreign investment. Every figure links to its official source, and each one says how solid it is.
Last update 05.10.2026 · Currency: US$ at annual average rates
How many times larger the richer side is. Select a pair to open its profile.
Both sides of each border, with the zone's set-up, the flows across it and what it suggests for JS-SEZ.
The same indicators in one table. Copy it as CSV to use in your own analysis.
What the comparison suggests. These are interpretations of the figures above, offered for discussion.
Singapore's output per head is 8.8 times Johor's, the widest of the five pairs and slightly wider than Singapore–Batam. Part of this is geography: the figure covers the whole state, rural districts included, while Batam, Shenzhen and San Diego are city or county units. Johor Bahru district alone would show a narrower gap.
8.8× Johor · 8.3× Batam · 5.4× Tijuana · 2.0× Øresund · 1.9× ShenzhenShenzhen became a special economic zone in 1980. Forty-five years later its output per head is about half of Hong Kong's, and the average pay of workers in state and large firms comes close to Hong Kong's median. Most of the 274 million border crossings in 2025 were made by Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan residents, so the traffic now runs both ways.
1.9× GDP gap · 750,000 crossings a dayTijuana has hosted export assembly plants since Mexico's maquiladora programme began in 1965. Baja California still produces about a fifth of San Diego County's output per head, and its average formal wage is about a sixth of San Diego's. Proximity brought jobs; higher local pay needs skills, local suppliers and firms that design their own products.
5.4× GDP gap · 5.8× pay gap · 60 years of maquiladorasDenmark and Sweden match tax registers to count every cross-border commuter, quarter by quarter: about 22,000 in 2024. For Johor–Singapore, the most-cited figure, around 300,000 people a day, is an estimate. JS-SEZ has no official commuter statistic, which makes building one a clear research and policy opportunity.
Official register (Øresund) vs estimate (JS-SEZ)Batam's income level is close to Johor's, and it has courted Singapore manufacturers for decades. But Batam is a ferry ride away, so most of its cross-border flow is visitors: about 1.29 million foreign arrivals in the first ten months of 2025, against roughly 300,000 people a day crossing Johor's two land links. The RTS Link, targeted to open by the end of 2026, adds rail capacity that no other Singapore neighbour has.
~4,200 foreign arrivals a day (Batam) vs ~300,000 daily crossers (Johor)How the figures were built, and where they fall short.