Investments in Malaysia’s services sector continue to grow

Malaysia’s services sector remained as the largest recipient of investments in 2013, pulling in RM144.7 billion for the year, an increase of 17.7% compared with RM122.9 billion in approved investments in 2012, Minister of International Trade and Industry, Datuk Sri Mustapa Mohamed said.

The Minister was speaking at the Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA) Annual Media Conference on Malaysia’s Investment Performance in 2013 in Kuala Lumpur on Friday.

The services sector covers a wide range of activities including real estate, transport, energy, telecommunications, distributive trade, support services, hotel and tourism, healthcare, education, financial services and regional/global establishments.

The approved investments in 4,796 services projects accounted for some 66.8% of the total investments of RM216.5 billion in 2013.

These investments are expected to create over 97,000 jobs, many of which are high-income jobs for Malaysians.

Domestic investors continued to dominate the services sector taking up 86.9% or RM125.7 billion of the approved investments for the sector last year.

The bulk of the investments in the services sector last year came from the real estate sub-sector with investments of RM83.3 billion followed by the power and utilities with RM9.1 billion, global operations, RM7.9 billion, transport, RM7.9 billion and hotels and tourism, RM7 billion.

Source: Malaysia Investment Performance Report 2013 and MIDA Media Statement 28 Feb 2014