JOHOR BARU: Johor attracted the most foreign direct investment (FDI) in the country, a whopping RM70.6bil, last year.
This is a huge improvement over RM6.8bil in 2020 and RM7bil in 2021, said Mentri Besar Datuk Onn Hafiz Ghazi.
“These investments will in turn create more than 12,000 jobs and business opportunities for the people of Johor and Malaysia in general,” he said in a Facebook post on Thursday (March 9).
He thanked International Trade and Industry Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz and state investment, trade and consumer affairs committee chairman Lee Ting Han for helping to realise the state's objective of attracting more high-value investment.
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Onn Hafiz also thanked Malaysian Investment Development Authority (Mida), Invest Johor and other state and federal agencies that provided support to the Johor government.
“God willing, the state government will be with the Federal Government to continue taking steps to develop Johor,” he added.
On Wednesday (March 8), it was announced at Mida's Annual Media Conference 2023 that Malaysia recorded approved investments totalling some RM264.6bil from 4,454 projects last year.
Tengku Zafrul said this was the second largest figure after 2021.
“There were two large one-off investments in 2021 from Intel and China’s Risen Energy Co Ltd,” he added.
The services sector was the main recipient of these investments with RM154bil, followed by RM84.3bil in the manufacturing sector and RM26.3bil in the primary sector, Mida said.
It added that FDI remained the major contributor to the total approved investments at 61.7% or RM163.3bil while domestic direct investment contributed 38.3% or RM101.3bil.
China led the way in total approved investments into Malaysia with RM55.4bil, followed by the United States (RM29.2bil), the Netherlands (RM20.4bil), Singapore (RM13.5bil) and Japan (RM11.4bil).
The states and territories that recorded the highest investment inflow last year were Johor, Selangor (RM60.1bil), Sarawak (RM28.2bil), Kuala Lumpur (RM25bil) and Penang (RM16.3bil).
