Ong: Malaysia to see healthy investment inflow from Chinese firms in 2H

Malaysia is expected to attract quite a healthy inflow of investments from Chinese companies in the second half of the year, Deputy International Trade and Industry Minister Ong Kian Ming said.

“I’ve recently come back from an investment mission to Shenzhen and Guangzhou together with Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng, and we did see a high level of interest among the companies that we met during the mission.

“I am cautiously optimistic that the investment approvals for Chinese companies in the second half of the year would increase,” he told a media conference after witnessing the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Packtica Sdn Bhd and China-based Shenzhen Qianhai Quantum Cloud Code Technology Co Ltd here yesterday.

He said Chinese investors were keen to come to Malaysia for various reasons, including the country’s investment condition and its position as gateway to the Asean market.

“They also have shown interest to diversify their facility locations into the country due to the ongoing USChina trade war,” he explained.

In the first half of 2019, Malaysia recorded approved investments totalling RM92.0 billion in the services, manufacturing and primary sectors, an increase of 7.6 per cent over the RM85.5 billion registered during the same period last year.

Top foreign investment sources were the United States with investments of RM11.7 billion, followed by China (RM4.8 billion), Singapore (RM3.1 billion) and Japan (RM2.1 billion).

Ong said it was normal for either China or the US to rank first or second as Malaysia’s investment sources.

“I think it’s good for us to diversify our sources of investment so that we can have investments coming from different sectors.. this is something that we welcome,” he said.

Meanwhile, security printing company Packtica signed the MoU with Shenzhen Qianhai Quantum for the Southeast Asia dealership of the latter’s products and for technology transfer. Packtica will leverage on its partner’s technology in a bid to provide comprehensive solutions to its clients.

Packtica founder and managing director Bryant Kooh said the customisable products and services had high efficiency and could be used by all market segments, especially on product protection and authentication, traceability, and identification of fraudulent activities such as counterfeit, parallel import and price dumping.

“We have produced more than 30 million pieces of QR (quick response) code label and high security label to ensure consumers are using genuine products. — Bernama