I do not always agree with World Bank even if their analysts are by far more qualified than me. Haha. However, I do agree with their latest view from their representative to Malaysia / country manager Faris Hadid-Zervos. He said that good investment climate and competitive costs are providing global investors with conducive business environment here in Malaysia. His words, “Malaysia is always ranked close to the top 20, across different types of international rankings, including that of the World Bank in Doing Business. It has also very developed infrastructure and connectivity, a highly-diversified economy, proactive government policies and multilingual workforce. All these make Malaysia a good investment destination.” Full article in Nst here.
Faris shared that Malaysia had historically been getting considerable amount of foreign direct investments (FDI) and in 2015 registered a net inflow of RM43.4 billion. This FDI clearly showed that it’s best to focus on the bigger picture of the ecosystem and not just the typical misconceptions. Besides this, Malaysia’s economic fundamentals are also improving and in 2015, the net investments were positive. Asia has been the main source of FDI flows with 64.7 percent followed by the Americas (16.4 percent) and Europe (14.1 percent). (Yes, I do think China plays a very big part here which is fine for me. To be very direct, China is not a charity body and does not simply invest in any country when there are no economic gains. Malaysia does have something positive to offer versus other countries)
Three years ago, I have a friend who told me that Malaysia will be a bankrupt nation soon. Three years later, as at currently, all three international rating agencies continue to rate Malaysia under the ‘investment’ category. Within the past three years, this ‘negative’ friend continues to buy Malaysian stocks, Malaysian properties and investing ever more in Malaysian unit trusts. I seriously hope everyone who’s thinking like my friend understand that should Malaysia suddenly becomes a bankrupt nation, all those investments we have may be wiped out. I hope I am right and my friend is wrong, for all his and my investments sake. Malaysia is nowhere near Healthiest but we are even further away from ‘about to go bankrupt’ even based on all the usual statistics versus a nation whose currency is strengthening because of expectations… Happy believing.
written on 21 Nov 2016
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