National Investment Aspirations

A key priority within the National Investment Aspirations is enhancing local productive capabilities - enabling the nation to create an increasingly diverse range of differentiated high-value products and services. As rapid digitisation and automation, driven by Industry 4.0 and accelerated by COVID, continues to shift the global economy away from labour-intensive industries, the importance of specialised capabilities and the capacity to manufacture complex products and services serves as a foundation to ensure long-term national competitiveness.

Recognizing this, Malaysia is committed to strengthening our foundations, leveraging on the principles of the 11th Malaysia Plan to uplift our economic complexity. To achieve this, we will:

• Foster enhanced local R&D&C&I (research, development, commercialisation and innovation) capabilities and spur greater innovation
• Support the transition of industries higher up the value chain to produce more differentiated and higher value products

In recent years, Malaysia has made significant progress towards achieving high-income status. With an increasingly diversified economy, driven by extensive global trade integration, Malaysia’s labour force is increasingly shifting towards manufacturing and service sectors, with a substantial uplift in productivity and workforce capability. As Malaysia continues to shape an environment which accelerates new advanced growth sectors, a key focus will be in empowering the workforce with strengthened capabilities, subsequently enabling the nation to capture greater high-value job opportunities.

Moving forward, the New Investment Policies:

• Accelerate and prioritise investments which create more high-income and more knowledge-intensive jobs
• Increase access to targeted upskilling opportunities, ensuring workforce remains relevant to industry needs
• Enhance industry access to a larger pool of highly-skilled Malaysian talent

Malaysia has seen significant growth in the last decade. In a single generation, we have transitioned into an upper-middle-income nation and established ourselves as one of the leading ASEAN economies. This is in large due to our ‘open’ approach, characterized by facilitative trade policies, extensive regional partnerships, and deep-integration into global and regional supply chains. These trade relationships, and subsequent economic linkages, have been fundamental in catalysing the growth of multiple Malaysian core sectors, local businesses, and the overall economy.

Moving forward, Malaysia seeks to expand and further integrate local supply chains into global value chains, further enhancing knowledge diffusion and ensuring greater degree of economic spillover for the nation. A key imperative moving forward is to:

• Ensure stronger linkages and knowledge transfer between companies
• Drive more facilitative policies for local companies to expand and internationalise
• Strengthen capabilities of local companies to develop higher value products and services

Clusters play a fundamental role in Malaysia's economic development. Major industrial clusters such as electronics industries in Penang, furniture and palm oil in Johor, and ICT in Klang Valley have been fundamental in driving significant economic growth and holistic ecosystem benefits for Malaysia. These include facilitating diffusion of core technologies, as well as enabling regional development and driving job-creation.

Clusters will continue to be a key catalyst in Malaysia's forward-looking strategy. As such, Malaysia’s New Investment Policies will take an increasingly facilitative approach in driving new cluster development, focused on accelerating new high-potential industries, as well as driving the continued development of existing clusters.

Key imperatives will be to:

• Formulate facilitative policies to accelerate the development of high-growth sectors in Malaysia
• Increase the degree of linkages between clusters and wider economy to ensure amplified economic spillover effects
• Streamline operations of existing clusters to ensure accelerated productivity growth and transition towards higher value-added products and services

Protecting and enhancing the livelihoods of Malaysians remain at the core of the National Investment Aspirations. Fundamentally, it is about driving the equitable economic development needed to unlock Malaysia's full growth potential. It involves taking strong and accountable public action to dismantle barriers and to expand opportunities for the wider population – particularly in ensuring equal job opportunities, access to education and healthcare. Building strong national foundations through human capital investments will be essential in driving the economic productivity needed to accelerate Malaysia's transition into a high-income nation.

Several key imperatives will be to:

• Foster increased infrastructure development across states
• Ensure better access to high-value job opportunities across states