Malaysia Calls For Inclusion Of Green Technology, Digital Economy Among Initiatives To Improve Viability Of MSMEs And The People

ASEAN’s sectoral bodies must continue working together to speed up the completion of the remaining initiatives sooner rather than later amidst rising uncertainties from the current global economic environment.

Speaking at the 54th ASEAN Economic Ministers’ Meeting and Related Meetings in Siem Reap, Cambodia, Minister of International Trade and Industry Dato’ Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali expressed Malaysia’s support for the recommendation to explore the expansion of the scope of the ASEAN Comprehensive Recovery Framework (ACRF) “as the lessons learnt during its implementation will significantly aid in the formulation of a resilient ASEAN Post-2025 Vision agenda,” in being the region’s consolidated exit strategy from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Azmin stressed the paramount importance of capacity building for Malaysian Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (MSMEs), as well as initiatives that would bring real and direct benefits to the people, particularly the youth, in terms of job creation and value-add to local enterprises and industries.

Sharing the developments of Malaysia’s economic performance, in terms of trade numbers for Jan-Aug 2022, which recorded an increase of 33.1% amounting to a total trade of RM1.873 trillion and exports breaching the RM1 trillion mark in 8 months, he added: “For August alone, Malaysia’s trade continued its record upward trend, charting a hike of 48.2% for exports and 67.6% for imports. This totals to a trade volume worth RM265.74 billion just for this month.”

On inflation, he said Malaysia had buckled the trend relative to other countries in the region, being relatively low at around 2.8% in the first seven months. However, he underscored that this should be attributed to the heavy subsidies particularly to cushion the impact of high energy prices on the people, which is costing the country around RM80 billion this year, the largest ever in the nation’s history.

Stressing the importance of enhancing supply chain security, the minister proposed the introduction of a regional stockpile initiative, which would entail each country keeping a national stockpile of critical products of which that particular country has comparative advantage relative to other trading partners.

At the meets opening ceremony Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Cambodia, His Excellency Samdech Techo Hun Sen stressed that while the world is facing many obstacles in development, ASEAN should continue attaching greater importance in maintaining the trading system on the basis of rule-of-law, a globalisation principle, multilateralism mechanism, as well as liberalisation of trade and investment, a message which resonated well with the Ministers and delegates in attendance.

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