Minister of International Trade and Industry Mustapa Mohamed said on Friday the investments involved 1,271 projects but he expected this year to be another challenging year for the country.

“As a diversified economy, we believe we can withstand these challenges and overcome them, especially with the continued inflow of foreign investments into the country. We are definitely doubling our efforts in achieving the country’s investment target,” he said.

Elaborating on the Q1 2016 investments, he said despite a weaker global environment, Malaysia remains as a competitive investment location for foreign investors, with an increase of 28 per cent in this quarter.

“Year-on-year, FDI increased to 12.8 billion ringgit in Q1 2016 from 10 billion ringgit in the corresponding period of 2015. Domestic investments led with 24.5 billion ringgit or 65.7 per cent of total approved investments in Q1 2016,” Mustapa said.

He said taking into account the two lumpy projects approved in Q1, 2015 — China’s in Johor and LNG9’s project in Sarawak – Q1, 2016 showed a decrease from 69.8 billion ringgit. The two projects amounted to 35.3 billion ringgit.

“I would like to highlight that without the two big projects, Q1 2016 actually shows an overall increase of 8.1 per cent from 34.5 billion ringgit last year,” he added.

Mustapa said the services sector attracted 27.6 billion ringgit of approved investments in Q1 2016. A total of 1,088 services projects were approved creating 20,200 employment opportunities, the largest potential employer in the economy. “Foreign investment in the services sector surged by 112.1 per cent from 3.3 billion ringgit in Q1, 2015 to 7 billion ringgit in the same period this year. We are seeing more foreign participation in distributive trade, education services, global establishments, financial services and real estate sub-sectors,” he said.

Distributive trade saw an increase of 992 per cent of foreign participation from 101.5 million ringgit in Q1 2015 to 1,108.7 million ringgit in Q1 2016.

The increased investments from regional and international retailers have boosted Malaysia’s ranking to 3rd position in the 2016 Global Retail Development Index (GRDI) by A.T. Kearney.

For the education sub-sector, the increase of 672.7 per cent of foreign investments from 19.3 million ringgit in Q1 2015 to 149.2 million ringgit in Q1 2016 reflects Malaysia’s success in accelerating the process in making the country a regional education hub of excellence. The private education sector will complement the government’s efforts in providing access to quality education to the people.

As to date, there are 501 private higher institutions that offer a wide range of disciplines at every level of education including short-term and professional courses certificate, diploma, degree and post-graduate degree qualifications.

Global establishments and end-to-end global supply chain management services are fast becoming important components in the Malaysian economic backbone.

In Q1 2016, MIDA approved a total of 60 global establishments with investments of 5.6 billion ringgit. The lion share of these was from 6 Principal Hub projects with total investments worth 5.5 billion ringgit.

These investments were in the aerospace, electronic & electrical (E&E), food & beverage and resource-based industries. The principal hub initiative is among the high value added services that is currently promoted by Malaysia.

Investments in the manufacturing sector for Q1 2016 totalled 8.9 billion ringgit from 170 projects. The approved manufacturing projects are expected to generate about 19,650 employment opportunities.

“Despite the decrease in investments in this sector for the first quarter of this year, it is noteworthy that Malaysia has attracted significant investments in the transport equipment industry, with a spike of 1,584 per cent from 40.1 billion ringgit in Q1 2015 to 675.7 billion ringgit in Q1 2016.

“Other industries which recorded high growth rates were paper, printing & publishing (944.0 per cent), food (550.0 per cent), leather & leather products (162.3 per cent), chemical & chemical products (159.1 per cent), scientific & measuring equipment (78.8 per cent), and rubber products (57.1 per cent).

Regardless of a lower investment value in Q1 2016, the E&E industry emerged as the main contributor to the total approved investments in the manufacturing sector compared to the corresponding period last year. Most of the high quality projects in E&E are concentrated in solar, fabricated wafers and semiconductor devices.

Malaysia continued to register a lower investment in the primary sector due to the challenges in global crude oil prices.

Investments in this sector recorded a total of 874.9 million ringgit in Q1 2016. The mining subsector led with approved investments of 692.2 million ringgit, mainly from oil and gas exploration activities.

Approved investments in the plantation and commodities subsector totalled 129 million ringgit. In Q1 2016, a total of 53.7 million ringgit investment was approved in the agriculture subsector.

US$1 = 4 ringgit as of 6/17/2016 via oanda.com