Malaysia’s authorities goals to place itself as an power and chip manufacturing hub this yr, leveraging its geographical location and expertise in these fields, the nation’s prime minister stated yesterday.
Addressing an financial discussion board in Kuala Lumpur, Anwar Ibrahim, who additionally serves as finance minister, stated that the Malaysian economic system had skilled sturdy development in 2024, fortified by a listing of great international investments within the high-tech sector, together with synthetic intelligence (AI) infrastructure.
“In 2024, Malaysia efficiently tamed inflation, lowered unemployment and stabilized our forex,” he told the Malaysia Economic Forum 2025, in keeping with the Star newspaper. “We’ve got had document highs in job creation but in addition the perfect performing inventory market in ASEAN.”
Anwar stated Malaysia will now purpose to “refine our experience” in oil and gasoline, semiconductors manufacturing and Islamic finance to turn into a “international market chief” in every area.
“In 2025,” he added, “we wish to double down on our geographical centrality, as a conduit for electrical energy, expertise, and provide chain diversification.”
In addition to having appreciable expertise in oil and gasoline manufacturing, which dates again to the early many years of the 20th century, Malaysia is a longtime regional leader in electrical and electronics manufacturing, together with in semiconductors. Most of its semiconductor manufacturing is predicated across the sprawling industrial parks round Penang, which had been established within the Nineteen Seventies, and within the close by Kulim Hello-Tech Park, which was set up in the 1990s.
Regardless of a level of stagnation because the Asian monetary disaster of 1997-1998, which has seen the manufacturing sector’s share of GDP decline from 31 % in 1999 to 23 % in 2010, Malaysia final yr notched a formidable variety of vital international investments in synthetic intelligence, cloud computing, and chip manufacturing. In Could, the U.S. search large Google announced that it will make investments $2 billion to develop its first knowledge middle and Google Cloud area in Malaysia, in an industrial park in Selangor state. This was adopted by the announcement in September that the Malaysian tech agency Dagang NeXchange Berhad and Google Cloud had signed a multi-year deal to offer sovereign cloud providers within the nation.
Over the previous few years, the nation has additionally attracted multibillion-dollar investments from the U.S. chipmaker Intel and the German agency Infineon, in addition to investments from different main Western and Chinese language corporations. Malaysia now accounts for 13 percent of worldwide semiconductor testing and packaging, and is already the world’s sixth-largest exporter of semiconductors, in keeping with a report final yr within the New York Instances. Nevertheless, most of this includes the extra rudimentary steps within the chipmaking course of, corresponding to meeting and testing.
Among the many objectives of the Malaysian authorities’s Nationwide Semiconductor Technique (NSS), which was unveiled in Could of final yr, is to push into extra technologically subtle processes corresponding to design and superior manufacturing. In saying the NSS final yr, Anwar said that his authorities plans to determine not less than 10 native firms in design and superior packaging for semiconductor chips, and “transfer to the frontier” of the strategically essential expertise.
Beneath the NSS, Malaysia is focusing on a further $1o0 billion in international funding. It has additionally earmarked fiscal help of not less than $5.3 billion to supply incentives to international buyers, together with tax breaks, subsidies, and visa exemption charges, and to coach 60,000 Malaysian engineers to satisfy business demand.
A big a part of Malaysia’s pitch is that it’s a secure vacation spot for funding in a area roiled by geopolitical tensions. Final yr, Anwar pitched Malaysia to international chipmakers as “probably the most impartial and non-aligned location for semiconductor manufacturing.” This can be a message that he repeated yesterday, saying that it was Malaysia’s “neutrality and openness for partnership that make us a pure hub for all.” If the previous yr means something, plainly an rising variety of international firms are discovering this to be a compelling pitch.
