KUALA LUMPUR: A total of 1.13 million out of 1.86 Malaysians who have migrated overseas are residing in Singapore as of 2022, says Human Resources Minister V. Sivakumar.
This was in reference to Malaysia's brain drain issue, which was brought up during an industry dialogue session held by Talent Corporation Malaysia (TalentCorp) themed "Malaysia Madani: Addressing Challenges in the Talent Ecosystem" on Tuesday (March 7).
He said questions were raised on how to retain and pull talent back into Malaysia.
"The issue of brain drain is a norm happening everywhere in the world. But if we were to compare globally, some 3.6% of the world's population have migrated from their home country to other countries.
"From the Malaysian perspective, the migration percentage is only 5.6% from the total population (33 million). So, if you compare globally, the disparity is big, but in micro context, the migration consists of 1.86 million people.
"So, to say it is a brain drain or migration, they have only gone to our neighbouring country Singapore," he said after chairing the dialogue session attended by 20 industry captains from the private sector.
The industry captains are members of TalentCorp Industry-Talent Advisory Council and TalentCorp Malaysia Global Talent Advisory Group (MyLead).
He added that Malaysians have also migrated to the United States, Australia and Canada, but there are opposing views on the matter with some saying that it was good to gain experience and knowledge from other countries.
