CYBERJAYA, Dec 16 (Bernama) -- To remain relevant in the automotive industry in Malaysia and globally, local automotive players have no other alternatives but to strive and achieve the highest possible competitive ability, said Minister of International Trade and Industry, Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed.

He said Malaysia's automotive industry is now facing tremendous challenges due to the continuous changes in market trends, high demand for automotive safety regulations, pressure on environmental policies and demand for lower cost of mobility.

"More critical is the stiff competition between automotive manufacturers in capturing market dominance. It is quite clear that with a combination of successful partnerships between the government and industry, the benefits are mutually exclusive.

"I would like to call upon the industry players to support all training endeavours especially in providing on-the-job training for our new graduate and undergraduate students," he said in his keynote address at the Malaysia Automotive Institute (MAI) Graduation Day 2014 here tonight.

A total of 3,152 graduates received their Industry Led Professional Certicates and Automotive Industry Certification Engineering (AICE) at the ceremony.

Mustapa said one of the challenges of the local automotive industry was getting qualified manpower.

He also said that he was scheduled to announce the feedback on the National Automotive Policy (NAP) in mid-January 2015 as the policy was already one year old.

The NAP was introduced this year to re-energise the local automotive industry.