KUALA LUMPUR: The five regional economic corridors continued to contribute towards sector growth and overall economic development, attracting total realised investments of RM174.5 billion across priority economic sectors.
The economic corridors attracted investments in among others, creative and content development, tourism, electrical and electronics and downstream petrochemicals processing, said the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) of the Prime Minister’s Department in the Eleventh Malaysia Plan (11MP).
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak tabled the five-year (2016-2020) plan in Parliament yesterday.
There were 427,100 jobs created as a result of the realised investments.
According to the EPU, during the Tenth Malaysia Plan, the government autonomously liberalised the services sector and continuously improved the ease of doing business to boost investor confidence and enhance competitiveness.
It said 18 services sub-sectors were liberalised in 2012 to allow up to 100 per cent foreign equity within the wholesale and retail trade, healthcare, professional services, environmental services, telecommunications, courier, and education sub-sectors.
Regionally, it added, Malaysia implemented 80 per cent of the 505 measures under the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC)blueprint, indicating the government’s commitment towards realising it.
The AEC, which is expected to be a reality by year-end, envisions Southeast Asia as a single market and production base with the free flow of goods, services and investments.
The EPU also said that regulatory reforms and business process improvements were undertaken to complement the liberalisation initiative, resulting in Malaysia being ranked at 18th position out of 189 economies in the 2015 World Bank’s Doing Business Report.
“Efforts were also taken to strengthen the innovation ecosystem along four key areas, namely shaping a supportive ecosystem, creating opportunities, putting enablers in place, and providing funding.
“Higher order thinking skills (HOTS) programmes were implemented in schools and tertiary institutions to inculcate a thinking culture to enable the next generation of Malaysians to think creatively,” it added.
The EPU said the effectiveness of these initiatives were measured based on national innovation-related indicators and international rankings such as the gross expenditure on research and development (GERD).
It highlighted that GERD as a share of the gross domestic product (GDP) increased from 1.07 per cent in 2010 to 1.13 per cent in 2012.
In 2012, 64.4 per cent of it was conducted mainly by multinational and large local companies.
Last year, the EPU said, Malaysia was ranked 33rd out of 143 countries in the Global Innovation Index (GII) and 20th out of 144 countries in the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), the second highest ASEAN country in both global indices. — Bernama