Malaysia among countries with highest services potential — research

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia is among the countries which have the highest services potential of digital technologies, particularly in government and labour-market efficiency, business sophistication and financial market development.

According to the Standard Chartered Global Research Special Report: Productivity Slowdown - Is This Time Different?, the United States, Hong Kong and Singapore top of the list with the highest services potential, reflecting the importance of the sector to these countries, the high tradebility of services and solid performance on indicators such as technology transfer, education and labour-market efficiency.

It said improvements in these sectors could also help to raise productivity levels in more traditional services sectors such as health and education, utilities and social and personal services.

“New technologies such as artificial intelligence and service robots have the potential to drive faster productivity, even in these more traditional services,” it said.

Meanwhile, the report said a major study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that global ‘frontier’ firms, that is the most productive, in services achieved productivity growth of 5.0 per cent per annum while non-frontier firms saw productivity fall 0.1 per cent per annum in the 2000s.

“The productivity growth of frontier firms in services was even higher than that of frontier firms in manufacturing (3.5 per cent per annum) during the same period,” it said. Meanwhile, it added. — Bernama