Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) through the Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA) has recorded a total of RM164 billion in approved investments through 4,599 projects in the manufacturing, services, and primary sectors in 2020.
In contrast, a total of 5,287 projects with investments of RM211.4 billion were approved in 2019.
This decline was due to the services and primary sectors being directly impacted by the declines in global demands because of the Covid-19 outbreak and the Movement Control Order (MCO) implementation.
Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin announced a nationwide Movement Control Order in March 2020 and a reimposed MCO on January 13 this year.
The manufacturing sector spearheaded the total investments approved in 2020 with a total amount of RM91.3 billion followed by the services sector RM66.7 billion and the primary sector with RM6.0 billion.
China was the top investor in the manufacturing sector in Malaysia, contributing RM17.8 billion of the total foreign investments approved in the sector. Additionally, China was also the largest source of foreign investments in the manufacturing sector for five consecutive years.
In terms of states in Malaysia, Selangor recorded the highest investments approved last year with RM38.7 billion, followed by Sabah with RM21.0 billion, Sarawak with RM19.6 billion, Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur with RM17.1 billion and Pulau Pinang with RM16.0 billion.
These five states contributed more than 60 percent of the total approved investments last year.
For the states’ manufacturing sector perspective, Selangor was the largest recipient of investments in the manufacturing sector for 2020 with RM18.4 billion, followed by Sarawak with RM15.7 billion, Pulau Pinang with RM14.1 billion, Sabah with RM12.0 billion and Johor with RM6.8 billion.
The sector recorded approved investments of RM91.3 billion for 2020, an increase by 10.3 percent from 2019 according to MITI and the number of manufacturing projects approved also increased by 6.2 percent from 988 projects in 2019 to 1,049 projects in the same year.
“Even with the outbreak, new project investments, accounting for 66.9 percent of the total manufacturing projects approved, were successfully secured in 2020.
This is a testament to MITI and MIDA’s efforts to ensure business continuity and investors’ friendly policies are in place to enable investors to have the confidence to establish new operations in the country,” Minister of MITI, Mohamed Azmin Ali said.
