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Published: Friday February 10, 2012 MYT 3:08:00 PM

LANGKAWI: The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI)is formulating a new approach in the trade and industry sector to avoid Malaysia being impacted adversely by the uncertain global economic conditions at present.

Its Minister, Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed said for this year, Malaysia needs to have a new initiative to ensure the economy can expand at a rate of between five-six per cent.

He said his ministry has had a number of meetings, among which was to encourage more investments in the country, particularly, small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

"We had detailed discussions. We hope to have the government consider our proposals, including, making access to financing easier for industries.

"Although there is much funding (business financing), there are still certain groups of SMEs who face difficulty in securing it.
"We will try to assist more during this time of economic uncertainty. We need a new approach towards encouraging domestic investments," he told reporters after officiating the Open Day with SMEs, here today.

He said the government and the ministry were contemplating seeking out new markets for Malaysia's products following the economic problems in many countries at present.

Mustapa said the ministry was focusing on SMEs as they account for 99.2 per cent of the total domestic business, apart from constituting about 90 per cent of the country's exports.
"If we succeed in assisting the SMEs, we can achieve the goal of becoming a high income nation by 2020," he added.
The two-day Open Day with SMEs is part of the ministry's programme of "going down to the ground."

Mustapa said the ministry would continue the programme to introduce MITI and its agencies in seeking to assist the development of industries in the country, especially, SMEs.

He said the same programme held six months ago in Jerlun, Kedah, over three days, saw 45,000 visitors.

He said for Langkawi, his hope was that the ministry, particularly its agency SME Corp, can organise the programme three months once as 65 per cent of the people were involved in SMEs related to tourism. - BERNAMA

Malaysia's trade growth seen at 6%

http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/2/10/business/10708786

Friday February 10, 2012

This is due to moderation of growth in China and the eurozone crisis
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's total trade is expected to grow between 5% and 6% this year, lower than that achieved in 2011, mainly due to the anticipated moderation of growth in China and the current eurozone crisis.

International Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed said regionally, Asia was Malaysia's largest export market, accounting for 71.3% of its total exports, with China emerging as its largest export destination in 2011.
Malaysia's exports to China grew 13.9% last year to RM91.25bil.

Mustapa: ‘China’s economic growth is expected to moderate this year.’

“China's economic growth is expected to moderate this year after a robust growth of 9.2% last year,” he told a press conference on Malaysia Trade Performance 2011 yesterday.

He said the main export to China was chemicals and chemical products, rubber products, electronics and electrical (E&E) products, manufactures of metal, processed food and petroleum products.
“Europe, our second largest export market at 10.4% last year, is still hampered by its debt crisis,” he said.

According to the International Monetary Fund, global economic growth this year is projected at 3.3% compared with 3.8% last year.

Mustapa said Malaysia's total trade last year grew by 8.7% to a record RM1.269 trillion, which was 1.8% above the average world trade.

“Exports and imports expanded by 8.7% and 8.5% respectively. Exports were valued at RM694.5bil while imports were valued at RM574.2bil. Trade surplus rose to 9.4% to RM120bil and it was the 14th consecutive year of trade surplus since 1998,” he said.

Of Malaysia's 10 top export destinations last year, all recorded an increase except the United States and Hong Kong which declined by 5.5% and 3.6% respectively on lower export of E&E products.
Meanwhile, the Statistics Department said in a statement that the increase in exports was mainly contributed by liquefied natural gas, palm oil, machinery, appliances and parts, rubber products, crude petroleum, chemicals and chemical products, iron and steel products as well as processed food with the main markets being Australia, Japan, China, Indonesia and South Korea.

AmResearch Sdn Bhd economic research director Manokaran Mottain told StarBiz that said the exports performance was still strong despite the global slowdown and uncertainties.

“We expect the trough in exports to be sometime in the first quarter of 2012 before a gradual recovery comes along. This will also be reflected in the gross domestic product (GDP) data where the first quarter is usually the weakest,” he said.

The Statistics Department said the industrial production index (IPI) which measures factory output and overall manufacturing activity increased 3% year-on-year with the indices for manufacturing and electricity climbing 4.5% and 3.1% respectively while the decline in the mining index narrowed to 0.8%.

The figures are unexpectedly higher than the median 1.7% expectations of economists in a Bloomberg survey, while for 2011, factory output expanded by 1.4% from a year earlier.

Manokaran said the increase in the IPI was largely due to the improvement in the mining index. “With the better-than-expected exports and IPI numbers, we expect GDP to come in at 5.3% for the final quarter of 2011 and 5.2% for the full year.”

101 LURIMAS

Saturday, February 11, 2012