KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 8 — New policies for strategic areas of foreign direct investment (FDI) would be announced next year, says International Trade and Industry Deputy Minister Dr Ong Kian Ming.

He said among others, the policy would include an e-commerce and data centre investment policy.

“We will have a brainstorming session early next year and when we’re ready we will announce them to the related agencies,” he told reporters at the Affin Hwang Capital Conference Series 2018 today.

Ong said the new policies for strategic areas of FDI are among the five strategies for 2019 listed by MITI.

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Another strategy is to institutionalise the trade and economic relationship with China to together improve the two-way strategic investments.

During his presentations earlier, the Bangi MP said Chinese companies are among the largest sources of FDI in the country, with RM9.51 billion recorded for the first eight months of 2018, followed by Indonesia (RM8.99 billion), the Netherlands (RM7.67 billion), the US (RM2.94 billion) and South Korea (RM2.45 billion).

He added that most of the Chinese companies operating in Malaysia are in two categories: global players but with still insular internal processes, and local champions in the early stages of going abroad.

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These two types of companies that are based here would take time to globalise and modernise, he said, adding that the global Chinese champions with a footprint here include Huawei and Alibaba.

“Another strategy is the “search, seek and secure” strategy for trade and investment missions or TIMs, which have resulted in almost RM3 billion of potential investments from Japan and South Korea during Minister Datuk Darell Leiking’s TIM in October 2018.

“We will also go down to the ground to promote funding initiatives, especially for Industry 4.0,” he added.

He noted that the government, when tabling the 2019 Budget, announced an allocation of RM210 million from 2019 to 2021 to support the transition and migration to Industry 4.0.

MITI would be assisting the first 500 small and medium enterprises to carry out the readiness assessment to migrate to Industry 4.0 platforms via the Malaysia Productivity Corporation. — Bernama