Malaysia aiming to turn out to be vitality, chip making hub, PM says

By Danial Azhar

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Malaysia desires to leverage its location to turn out to be an vitality and chip manufacturing hub this 12 months, driving a latest soar in investments and a beneficial outlook for the home economic system, its premier and financial minister mentioned on Thursday.

Malaysia is quick changing into a haven in Southeast Asia, with overseas traders returning as bettering progress and a steady forex set it aside from friends grappling with political flux and financial uncertainty. 

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim mentioned Malaysia’s economic system rebounded dramatically final 12 months, spurred by an inflow of strategic investments, most considerably in renewable vitality and synthetic intelligence infrastructure. He added inflation and the ringgit have been steady and the inventory market was the area’s high performer.

“In 2025, we wish to double down on our geographical centrality, as a conduit for electrical energy, expertise and provide chain diversification,” he mentioned at an financial discussion board.  

Anwar mentioned Malaysia will now purpose to refine its experience in oil and gasoline, semiconductors, and Islamic finance to turn out to be a world market chief in every area.  

Economic system minister Rafizi Ramli mentioned Malaysia is seeking to produce its personal graphics processing unit chips as demand for synthetic intelligence and information centres grows.  

“We hope that we are able to begin producing made-by-Malaysia GPUs and chips within the subsequent 5 to 10 years,” he mentioned. 

Malaysia, a significant participant within the semiconductor trade that accounts for 13% of world testing and packaging, is concentrating on over $100 billion in funding for the sector. 

The Southeast Asian nation is seen as properly positioned to draw extra enterprise as Chinese language chip companies diversify abroad for assembling wants, and has attracted multibillion-dollar investments from main companies lately, together with Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) and Infineon (OTC:IFNNY).

Malaysia additionally obtained a slew of digital investments from main tech companies final 12 months, together with Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s Google, serving to to propel its economic system with progress beating market expectations within the second and third quarters and the ringgit changing into considered one of Asia’s high performers in 2024.

(This story has been refiled to repair formatting of hyperlinks in paragraphs 9, 10)