M’sia investment inflow undaunted by political climate

Fresh reports from Kuala Lumpur, suggest that Malaysia is seeing plenty of investment from foreign shores in spite of its unstable political conditions. An example of this is Vivo Bio Tech Ltd, an Indian firm case which plans to invest $140 million in Malaysia. The investment is for building a research and manufacturing plant in Malacca. Confirming this Malaysian news sources add that this is in addition to Japanese, German, and American direct foreign investments worth 16.6 billion that have taken place since March.As per reports of the Malaysian Industrial Development Authority the country’s FDI inflow will surpass last year’s 33.4 billion ringgit. This comes as much awaited good news to the Malaysian troubled people.

Ex Mida director-general R. Karunakaran, says that the first four months of 2008 has seen investment worth 23.9 billion ringgit. These investments include projects by Germany’s Q-Cell, Japanese Ibiden Co Ltd, and US-based SunPower Corp and Honeywell International Inc. This is expected to raise the investment figures to nine billion ringgit.

Malaysia attracted a large number of foreign investors from countries like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, etc belonging to the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Malaysia faced the ides of March in the form of an election upset wherein the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN), a conglomerate of the three main ethnic groups, lost its traditional two-thirds majority support in parliament.

Amidst political turmoil and rising oil prices there was enough speculation about the investment figures, but this has been proved wrong much to the relief of the financial leaders. Much required global approval in the form of the Global Competitiveness Report of 2007-2008, which placed Malaysia in the 19th position from that of the 23rd in 2007 has been timely indeed.

In another achievement of sorts Kearney’s 2007 Global Services Location Index (GLSI) indicated that Malaysia was one of the top three best destinations in the world for investment in terms of outsourcing business.