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Showing posts with label Foreign Direct Investment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Foreign Direct Investment. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 27, 2023

Malaysia's FDI figures down but not out

PETALING JAYA: Since coming into power last November, the unity government has made it abundantly clear it is eager to keep Malaysia as a magnet for foreign investments.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has travelled to several countries to promote Malaysia as an investment destination, including to China in April and recently, as well as to the ongoing 78th United Nations General Assembly in New York, following the Invest Malaysia New York event in The Big Apple.

On the other hand – while Anwar has been busy making stops worldwide to foster economic ties on behalf of the country – the official numbers from the Statistics Department showed that for the first half of 2023 (1H23), foreign direct investment (FDIs) into Malaysia amounted to RM15.1bil, only a third of the funds that came in at the same time last year.

For the whole of 2022, Malaysia had managed to garner RM74.6bil of FDIs, which plainly means that it would be a mountain to climb for the country to match that number this year.

For many analysts, the apparent political ambiguity before the six-state elections back in August had played a role in discouraging foreigners to commit their funds to Malaysia, and with that having been resolved, they are looking forward with more optimism.

According to Nixon Wong, chief investment officer for Kuala Lumpur-based fund management firm Tradeview Capital, the year-on-year (y-o-y) decline in FDIs for 1H23 was also due to the strengthening of the US dollar, which capped FDI inflows, on top of the uncertainties before the state elections.

However, he believes the tide could be changing, with major global players such as Germany’s Infineon Technologies AG as well as Intel Corp, Amazon Web Services and Tesla Inc of the United States having set up shop in the country or pledged to commit further investments.

Moving forward, he told StarBiz: “I believe with the initiatives on green energy generation and increasing adoption of environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles in doing business could attract more FDIs our business environment becomes a better match to the ESG criteria these global players are looking into.

“Also, momentum could be built by taking advantage of trade diversions due to uncertain geopolitical tensions that include the United States-China trade conflict and the Russia-Ukraine crisis.”

At the same time, Rakuten Trade head of equity sales Vincent Lau is similarly expecting “more FDI good news” towards the end of the year and into 2024.

“Of course, there were also other factors for the y-o-y pullback (in FDIs into the country) such as the high interest rates environment globally, but there is a sense of relief now that politically the country is stable. This, coupled with the aggressive efforts of the Prime Minister, means things should improve from here,” he predicted.

Having said that, Lau believes the upcoming tabling of Budget 2024 would be essential to clarify Putrajaya’s policies on many issues, including how it intends to further encourage and more importantly ease the entrance of FDIs into the country.

Besides that, he noted that the targeted subsidy reforms and the possible amendments on the government’s tax base could also set the tone for FDIs if further details could be ironed out next month.

While recognising it may be a big ask for Malaysia to surpass the RM74.6bil FDI amount of 2022 for this year, Lau is hopeful of the situation over the longer term as the government has been active in its efforts in attracting investments.

“This can also be seen by Bursa Malaysia organising its first physical Invest Malaysia New York in six years last week, which is part of a push for investments for the Madani Economy initiatives,” he told StarBiz.

Offering his views from an economical perspective, Centre for Market Education (CME) chief executive Dr Carmelo Ferlito opined that FDI quarterly volatility has been a consistent trend over the long term, and therefore should not set off any alarm bells yet.

In addition, he said the 2022 FDI data is likely to have been boosted by the post-lockdown recovery that the country experienced last year, an effect that is quickly fading.

While the news has been flushed with reports of FDIs being granted approvals since the start of year, such as the RM170bil commitment by China and RM23bil pledge by Japan that was announced in July, Ferlito suggested it may be more meaningful to look at implemented FDI’s instead of just approved ones.

He said that back in April, the CME has backed a call by former second finance minister Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani for the setting up of a special committee under the International Trade and Industry Ministry to monitor investments in Malaysia.

“The commission would have had to monitor not only the inflow of FDIs and the approvals, but also how many get implemented, as well as the reason why some of them are not implemented and so on. It was a good proposal, and we think it deserves to regain interest,” he says.

With Anwar having called for the cutting down on red tape and striving to improve the ease of doing business, Ferlito said the Prime Minister is aware there are issues for foreign businesses to enter the country which are related with institutional arrangements.

As such, he has urged Anwar to take the lead in creating a reform process to achieve those goals of reducing red tape and increasing the ease of doing business, as advocated in the Prime Minister’s Ekonomi Madani speech.




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Thursday, August 31, 2023

How China’s slowdown may spill over to Malaysia


CHINA’S stuttering economic recovery post-Covid-19 pandemic reopening has stirred concerns that a protracted deep economic slowdown will have global repercussions, given its interconnectedness with each and every economy in this globalised world and transmission to both emerging and developed countries through different channels.

A slowing China economy is a bane for the world economy. While the global economy continues to gradually recover in 2023, the growth remains weak and low by historical standards, and the balance of risk remains tilted to the downside. It is not out of the woods yet.

Global manufacturing and services activities are losing momentum. Global trade, especially exports, remain in the doldrums, weighed down by weak consumer and business spending amid a continued inventory adjustment in the semiconductor sector.

Prices of commodities and energy have also softened. Global monetary tightening has started to weigh down on activity, credit demand, households and firms’ financial burden, putting pressure on the real estate market.

A slew of disappointing economic data for two consecutive months (June and July) from China indicated that the world’s second-largest economy (17.8% of the world’s gross domestic product or GDP) is indeed losing steam.

Falling exports, weak consumer spending, slowing growth in fixed investment and continued concerns about the property sector have dampened the recovery.

The emergence of deflation concerns adds to the complexity of China’s flagging recovery.

The Chinese government has provided a range of strategic measures aimed at targeting specific sectors.

These range from consumption (spending on new energy vehicles, home appliances, electronics, catering and tourism) to the property sector (reducing down-payment ratios for first-time homebuyers, lowering mortgage rates and easing purchase restrictions for buying a second house) and tax relief measures to support small businesses, tech startups and rural households.

China’s slowdown is a key risk for the world economy, commodities and energy markets as well as the semiconductor industry.

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, China was the world’s most important source of international travellers, accounting for 20% of total spending in international tourism (US$255bil overseas and making 166 million overseas trips in 2019).

We consider three channels through which China’s slowdown can have spillover effects on Malaysia via direct and indirect transmissions: trade and commodity prices, services and financial markets.

Overall, the estimated impact of a 1% decline in China’s GDP growth could impact about 0.5% points on Malaysia’s economic growth.

Trade is the most important channel as China has been Malaysia’s largest trading partner since 2009, with a total trade share of 16.8% (exports share: 13.1%; imports share: 21.2%) in the first half of 2023 (1H23).

Spillovers from slower China demand and commodity prices are negative for Malaysia, a net commodity exporter.

After recording seven successive years of increases in exports to China since 2017, Malaysia’s exports to China declined by 8.8% in 1H23.

In sectors such as tourism, China’s tourists are one of the major foreign tourists in Malaysia. In the first five months of 2023, Chinese tourists totalled 403,121 persons or 5.4% of total international tourists in Malaysia, and was only 12.9% of 3.1 million persons in 2019.

According to the Malaysia Inbound Tourism Association, though the number of Chinese tour groups coming to Malaysia has increased in July and August to between 800 and 1,000 for the summer vacation, the number of tourists per group is smaller between 10 and 20 persons.

While direct financial links between China and Malaysia are limited, there will be indirect spillovers through spikes in global financial volatility as investors worry that China’s deep economic slowdown would temper global growth, and also has spillovers to the US economy.

Will China foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows into Malaysia slow?

Capital movements will be influenced by the inter-linking of factors such as economic growth and investment prospects in the host country (Malaysia).

These include stable political conditions and good economic and financial management as well as conducive investment policies.

The US-China trade war and rising trends of geoeconomic fragmentation have witnessed FDI flows among geopolitically aligned economies that are closer geographically as well as geopolitical preferences.

Throughout the period 2015-2022, China’s gross FDI inflows into Malaysia averaged RM7.5bil per year. Even during the Covid-19 pandemic, China’s economic slowdown did not deter the inflows of FDI into Malaysia (RM7.8bil in 2020; RM8.1bil in 2021; and RM9.8bil in 2022).

In 1H23, China’s gross FDI inflows increased by 25.2% to RM2.1bil though it is likely that the full-year FDI will be below the average FDI inflows of RM8.6bil per year in 2020 to 2022.

China was the largest foreign investor in Malaysia’s manufacturing sector in 2016 to 2022 before dropping to second position in 2022 and the fourth position in 2021.

There was a contrasting picture when it comes to China’s approved investment in the manufacturing sector, which saw two consecutive years of decline (2022: 42.5% to RM9.6bil and 2021: 6.5% to RM16.6bil) and declining further by 17.8% to RM4.3bil in the first quarter of 2023.

We believe that Malaysia will remain one of the preferred investment destinations to China, given both countries’ strong established friendship and bilateral ties in trade and investment as well as people-to-people movements.

Malaysia needs to enhance its investment climate with progressive policies to rival regional peers to offer the country as a China Plus One destination for China and foreign companies.

Malaysia can offer investments to build a chip-testing and packaging factory, advanced manufacturing technologies such as robotics and automation, manufacturing electric vehicle supply chain, petrochemicals, renewable energy, agriculture and food processing.

China can offer the technology, innovation and technical know-how as well as talent that deepen the country’s industry integration with global supply chains and also links Malaysia and China to South-East Asia.

China can invest in Malaysian manufacturing companies to help them adopt advanced manufacturing technologies and further improve their competitiveness.

The RM170bil prospective investments (comprising RM69.7bil from 19 memoranda of understanding and RM100.3bil from the round-table meeting) concluded during the prime minister’s visit to China are set to provide a massive investment boost to our economy for years to come.

Among these are China’s Rongsheng Petrochemical Holdings, which will invest RM80bil to build a petrochemical park in Pengerang, Johor; and investment from Geely, with an initial investment of RM2bil in the Tanjung Malim Automotive Valley, which will gradually increase to RM23bil in the future.

 LEE HENG GUIE is Socio-Economic Research Centre executive director. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.

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