Kuala Lumpur: The Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry (MITI) is targeting a five per cent increase in total trade for 2025, from RM2.879 trillion registered in 2024.
Its minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz said, however, should there be tariffs imposed by the United States (US) or any new measures posed by other countries, there would be an impact, and Malaysia cannot deny that fact.
“Objectively speaking, I have to admit that when we forecast, we need to be more agile, allowing the forecast to be adjusted.
“Just like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF)... they will always revise their gross domestic product (GDP) forecast due to geopolitics, geoeconomics reasons and so on,” he said at the press conference on ‘MITI Report Card 2024 and Outlook 2025’ here today.
Tengku Zafrul said that although the target is lower than the year-on-year growth of nine per cent in 2024, five per cent is still growth.
But because of the challenges and assumptions that were made to the forecast, he said MITI expects that the growth would be in line with the country’s GDP growth which is between 4.5 and 5.5 per cent.
Meanwhile, elaborating on the free trade agreement (FTA) with the European Union (EU), Tengku Zafrul said that both parties have resumed meetings on the matter and that palm oil is no longer an issue.
“We have addressed the concerns and the fact that we have complied with the standards. But having said that, there are other areas that we need to look at before we can conclude the FTA.
“We want to make sure that it is a win-win (and) more complete in the sense that we look at digital and green.
“We want to make sure that Malaysian companies are ready to participate and leverage the FTAs, or else we cannot see (its) positive spillover,” said the minister.
He is also targeting the completion of the Malaysia-EU FTA by next year.
At the press conference, Tengku Zafrul also presented the approved digital investments, which, up until the third quarter (3Q) of 2024, stood at RM64.8 billion versus the full year of 2023, which recorded RM60.5 billion.
“From 2021-3Q 2024, approved digital investments reported by the Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA) and Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) was RM209.5 billion, with 4,704 job opportunities created.
“Data centres make up RM145.4 billion (69 per cent) of the approved digital investments,” he said.
