Investment Opportunities in Malaysia

As a regional Hub of Excellence, Malaysia offers a good environment and business opportunities for several emerging sectors highlighted below.  World-class and small & medium enterprises can make Malaysia to be part of their go-to-market strategic location such as to have a Regional Operational and Marketing Headquarters in Malaysia.

It is a common knowledge that natural disasters such as earthquake, tsunami, typhoon, and flood would have adverse impact to industry growth as well as supply chain.  Hence, before selecting a strategic location to start their business, enterprises must take the cost of natural disaster into consideration. With an advantage of virtually free of major natural disasters, Malaysia is an ideal location for enterprises to expand their operation into Asia.

>> Regional Service Outsourcing Hub (includes IT and Engineering Support)

Malaysia is one of major global service outsourcing destinations and it is well known in the areas of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) and IT consulting services.  According to the consultant firm A.T. Kearney’s 2011 Global Services Location Index, Malaysia was ranked the top third most popular destination, after India and China, for service outsourcing.  >> more

>> Regional Research & Development Center

For World-Class enterprises, setting up a Regional Research & Development Center for the East-West Links realization in Malaysia is not something new.   Over the years,  MNCs such as Intel, Agilent, Motorola, Altera, Plexus, Benchmark, Huawei, Bosch, AMD, British Telecom and others have established their regional R&D center in Malaysia.  The multi culture, Multilanguage, high literate workforce, international management experiences, IP protection policy (such as the cyber law), government R&D incentives are among the elements that have given MNCs confidence to establish their Regional Research & Development Center in Malaysia.  Malaysia continues to welcome World-Class and Small & Medium enterprises to leverage Malaysia's advantages for their R&D strategy.

>> Regional Animation Creation Center

Creative media is one of the industries promoted by Malaysian government through the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC).  In Malaysia, based on advertising, animation, digital content, film & TV, games, music & video, it is estimate that the industry is a USD$ 5 billion business.  Malaysia have emerged to be a popular regional creative media development hub. Rhythm & Hues, Pinewood Studios, Endemol, Spacetoon, Al Jazeera Networks, Al Jazeera Childern's Channel, Codemasters, Qtelmedia, PolyAssets United, Streamline Studios, Igloo Digital Arts, etc.  In 2010, IBM and MDeC jointly developed the MSC Malaysia Animation & Creative Content Center (MAC3) Rending Farm, a rendering cloud infrastructure comprising of IBM's hardware, software and cloud computing & consulting services.

>> Renewable Energy

An equatorial and maritime country, Malaysia has abundant sunshine and solar radiation throughout the year. Therefore it has become a home for solar power industry that involves in activities such as R&D, manufacturing, test bed for solar power related technology or products.  First Solar and Sun Power from United State, Q-Cells from Germany, BP Power from UK, ReneSola from Singapore and others have had their presence in Malaysia and their operations include silicon photovoltaic wafers/cells/modules/panels fabrication.  The presence of these corporations has made Malaysia a regional hub for the solar industry.

On top of MNCs’ presence, there is the Renewable Energy (RE) Bill which was passed in 2011 in Parliament. This is to encourage the production of power from renewable sources (Biogas, Biomass, Solid Waste, Small Hydro, Solar PV) by independent power plants (company) . The power generated is then supplied to the electricity grid from a specific duration. The measure is to support Malaysia’s aspiration in becoming  a leader in green technology, and to meet 40% carbon emission intensity reduction target by 2020.  >> more

>> Regional Islamic Banking Center

Islamic banking is another emerging sector promoted by Malaysian government.  With it Islamic background and experience in banking or finance, Malaysia has an edge in helping international corporations to involve themselves in regional Islamic banking activities in Malaysia as one of their go-to-market strategies.  By virtue of its membership in OIC, Malaysia is in a god position to play a role of linking to other Islamic countries, especially countries in the Middle East.

>> Value Added Manufacturing Center

Malaysia has become an investment destination for manufacturing sector since 1970's. A large number of MNCs and SMEs  such as Agilent, Intel, AMD, Motorola, Bosch, Osram, Continental, Jabil, Flextronics, Plexus, Benchmark Electronics, Panasonic, Sony, Hitachi, Sharp, Ibiden, Kobe Precision, etc., set their manufacturing footprints in Malaysia since then and sectors they have involved including semiconductors, electronics appliances and mechanical equipments.  They have valued Malaysia as a strategic location for the Asia Pacific market and worldwide market expansion strategy as well as part of the risk management strategy.  Moving forward and with the support from friendly policy, low inflation, political stability, natural disaster free, literate and skilled workforce coupled with international manufacturing management experiences, Malaysia will continue to grow as a strategic and popular location for go–to-market strategy. 

>> Regional Distribution Center

With the advantage of multilingual and multi culture, natural disaster free, safety as well as developed logistic facilities such as air and sea transportation, Malaysia is a safe and reliable Regional Hub of Supply Chain.  International distributor can consider to leverage Malaysia’s advantages for Asia Pacific as well as ASEAN market coverage.