KUALA LUMPUR, March 25 (Bernama) -- The country's electric and electronic (E&E) sector has been seeing persistent pick-up in orders the past five months, Minister of International Trade and Industry (MITI) Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed said. "Things have been looking good for them since the fourth quarter last year, while January and February were also good," he said.

Speaking to reporters after his ministry's dialogue with electrical and electronic industry here today, he said MITI would continue working with companies in ensuring Malaysia progresses and remains competitive, especially in the E&E industry.

The dialogue was the ministry's first session this year. The format of the dialogue for 2010 will be conducted over a longer period of time focusing on one sector of the industry per session.

The ministry will conduct similar dialogue with the iron and steel industry next month.

At the session on Thursday, Mustapa said the E&E companies had expressed their difficulties employing local labour and had requested the government to relax the ruling on foreign labour.

He said they also raised the issue of power outages which they claimed had happened more frequently now than before.

"We promise to take up shortest possible time with Tenaga Nasional to solve this issue," he said.

Mustapa said the E&E companies had also hoped for a policy to assist local suppliers especially in respect to government procurement and had sought that more consideration be given to them.

The industry members also complained of substandard products entering the local market due to the implementation of the Asean Free Trade Area and Asean-FTA with a few countries.

This issue has escalated in the past one year, and the players don't want Malaysia being used as a dumping site, Mustapa said.

On investment, Mustapa said the companies asked for more generous reinvestment allowance benefit, currently granted for 15 years.

"We will consider the matter very seriously," he said.

-- BERNAMA