KUALA LUMPUR: The semiconductor industry is expected to remain the golden goose for national economic growth this year.
Malaysia Semiconductor Industry Association (MSIA) president Datuk Seri Wong Siew Hai said the export value of the local semiconductor industry that ranged between 38% and 40% last year was expected to remain consistent in 2025.
“In fact if you took the other industries and added them up together, their export value only comes up to around 40% and the semiconductor industry covers the rest. In terms of trade surplus, we are also the highest,” he told The Star on the sidelines of the Asean Economic Leaders Conference Outlook for 2025 held here yesterday.
Wong said that last year, there was strong anticipation for the semiconductor industry to take off drastically, but this did not happen.
“The focus was mainly on artificial intelligence, and unfortunately we are not there yet. This is one of the main reasons why our industry did not experience what we were expecting.
“The electric vehicle (EV) sector also did not do exceptionally well, it took off then plummeted both here and globally,” he added.
Wong said despite global projections that growth could surged up to 16% for the industry, Malaysia was unlikely to see double digit growth.
“I think it will be more of a single-digit growth, and we will only be able to tell from the second quarter onwards. Typically, the first quarter is always a weak one for the sector. So we will have to wait and see what happens,” he pointed out.
Wong hoped that the EV sector would bounce back alongside smart equipment manufacturing, including wafer fabrication (FAB) equipment manufacturing, which will give the industry the boost it needed.
“We want to bring in foreign direct investment for FABs because this cost a lot of money. If we are talking about mature FABs we are looking at around US$3bil while high-end FABs could go into the region of US$10bil to US$20bil.”.
Wong said the idea was to have more FABs here so that an entire ecosystem could be built up, including material supplies, technical supplies and servicing.
He also described the National Semiconductor Strategy (NSS) as one of the best announcements made by the government last year, adding that it allowed Malaysia to gain traction and put it on a strong footing in the industry.
“In terms of getting recognition and reinforcing the importance of the role Malaysia can play, the NSS certainly helped. So we have reset some very aggressive targets for the NSS and the challenge now will be on how we can execute it,” he said, adding that one of the biggest barriers for players within the industry was breaking through the first success.
“We need to gather more momentum, because once we have our first success, more companies will see the growth and opportunities there and want to be a part of it. So we need that push,” he added.
