\u201cWe shared notes on how our respective governments are dealing with the pandemic, as well as the economic consequences arising therefrom.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cWe concurred that it (RCEP) is crucial for the region to move ahead with it sooner rather than later,\u201d he said in a post on his Twitter account<\/a>.<\/p>\n The RCEP is a regional agreement that aims to liberalise trade and investment, and to strengthen economic cooperation in Asia-Pacific economies.<\/p>\n In another news<\/a>, Malaysia attracted RM207.9 billion worth of approved investments in the manufacturing, services and primary sectors last year, up\u00a01.7 per cent compared to 2018.<\/p>\n The Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA) said domestic direct investment\u00a0accounted for the bulk of the total approved investments —\u00a060.4 per cent or RM125.5 billion.<\/p>\n Foreign direct investment (FDI), though only making up 39.6 per cent, recorded a\u00a02.9 per cent growth to RM82.4 billion, MIDA said in a statement yesterday.<\/p>\n It said the services sector led the way for investments approved, which grew\u00a0by 11.3 per cent from 2018. A total of\u00a04,087 projects were approved, with investments\u00a0valued at\u00a0RM118.1 billion last year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This was followed by the manufacturing sector with approved investments of RM82.7 billion and the primary sector at RM7 billion.<\/p>\n Three countries accounted for 66.3 per cent of total FDI approved in the manufacturing, services and primary sectors:\u00a0the United States\u00a0(US) (RM26.8 billion), China (RM15.7 billion) and Japan (RM12.1 billion).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Four states contributed more than 60 per cent\u00a0of the total approved investments for 2019. They are Selangor (RM47.8 billion), Penang (RM33.7 billion), Johor (RM24.4 billion) and Kuala Lumpur (RM21.6 billion).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In the services sector, MIDA said\u00a0the top five investment contributors were\u00a0real estate (RM40.9 billion), utilities (RM32.6 billion), global establishments (RM11.8 billion), distributive trade (RM11.7 billion) and support services (RM5.7 billion).<\/p>\n For the manufacturing sector, the number of\u00a0projects approved jumped\u00a037 per cent to 988 projects from 721 projects in 2018.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n FDI accounted for 65.2 per cent (RM53.9 billion) of total approved investments in this\u00a0sector, while domestic investments constituted the remaining 34.8 per cent (RM28.8 billion).<\/p>\n On the sector\u2019s top-performing industries in 2019, the agency said they were electrical and electronics (RM25.7 billion), paper, printing and publishing (RM10.8 billion), transport technology (RM8.0 billion), non-metallic mineral products (RM6.9 billion), and chemicals and chemical products (RM4.8 billion).<\/p>\n “It is noteworthy that investments in the three catalytic sub-sectors, namely electrical and electronics, machinery and equipment and chemical, and two high growth areas \u2013 aerospace and medical device \u2013\u00a0recorded an increase of 90.2 per cent to RM40.9 billion last year from RM21.5 billion in 2018,\u201d MIDA said.<\/p>\n Both China (RM15.3 billion) and the US\u00a0(RM14.2 billion) were the two top investor countries in the country\u2019s manufacturing sector, contributing\u00a054.7 per cent of the total foreign investments approved in the sector,\u00a0it said.<\/p>\n MIDA also noted\u00a0that\u00a0Selangor (RM17 billion) was the largest recipient of investments in the manufacturing sector last year,\u00a0followed by Penang (RM16.9 billion), Kedah (RM11.5 billion) and Johor (RM11.5 billion).<\/p>\n For the\u00a0primary sector, investments approved slipped to\u00a0RM7 billion from\u00a0RM10.9 billion in 2018, with the mining sub-sector leading\u00a0the bulk (94.3 per cent) of investments.<\/p>\n The rest of the investments were\u00a0from\u00a0the plantation and commodities sub-sector, and the agriculture sub-sector, which registered sustainable investments of RM291.4 million and RM135.1 million, respectively.<\/p>\n Senior Minister and Minister of International Trade and Industry (MITI), Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali, said while the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the global industrial system, MITI is committed to ensuring that Malaysia continues to be positioned as an investor-friendly location for long term growth of both foreign and domestic businesses.<\/p>\n “FDI\u00a0is a long-term capital flow. We trust that the existing foreign companies will continue to weather the storm and retain their investment in the country.<\/p>\n “Malaysia kick-started this year with five approved manufacturing and services projects worth RM4.6 billion. The priority now is\u00a0to bring in high value-added investments that can help to revive the economy,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n He said as business as usual approach will no longer work in this challenging environment, a fundamental solution for the country to revitalise the economy is through adopting bold initiatives to ensure impactful accomplishments.<\/p>\n “Closer partnerships between federal, states and local authorities will be of the essence in facilitating our investors and ensuring the implementation of approved projects.<\/p>\n “All stakeholders need to make the necessary changes and re-engineer processes to deliver more efficient and effective services. Digitalisation and automation is indeed the way forward,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KUALA LUMPUR, April 21 — Malaysia and South Korea strive\u00a0to strengthen the economy of Asia-Pacific…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,41,7574,17],"tags":[790,7380,8517],"class_list":["post-3368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","category-business","category-covid19","category-economy","tag-azmin-ali","tag-covid-19","tag-yoo-myung-hee"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/aa-korea.png",1053,593,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/aa-korea-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/aa-korea-300x169.png",300,169,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/aa-korea-768x433.png",640,361,true],"large":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/aa-korea-1024x577.png",640,361,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/aa-korea.png",1053,593,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/aa-korea.png",1053,593,false],"newsium-slider-full":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/aa-korea.png",1053,593,false],"newsium-featured":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/aa-korea.png",1024,577,false],"newsium-medium":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/aa-korea.png",720,405,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Editor"]},"category_info":"Asia<\/a> Business<\/a> COVID19<\/a> Economy<\/a>","tag_info":"Economy","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3371,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3368\/revisions\/3371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/aa-korea.png\")
Approved investments up 1.7 pct to RM208 bln in 2019 – MIDA<\/strong><\/h5>\n