Malaysia records approved investments of $21 billion in Q1
KUALA LUMPUR, June 11 (Reuters) - Approved investments in Malaysia rose by 3.7% in the first quarter from a year earlier to 89.8 billion ringgit ($21.2 billion), the Malaysian Investment Development Authority said on Wednesday.
Foreign investments were 60.4 billion ringgit, or two-thirds of the total, and domestic investments accounted for 29.4 billion ringgit, the authority said in a statement.
"The investment environment in 2025 is expected to remain challenging due to continued geopolitical and macroeconomic headwinds stemming from the U.S.-China trade war," Trade Minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz said in the statement.
Tengku Zafrul said while protectionist policies and supply-chain frictions would affect corporate decision-making, he expected Malaysia to attract more investment given the broader Asian economy was increasing its share of global GDP.
The top three sources of foreign investment in the quarter were Singapore with 28.3 billion ringgit, the United States at 9.9 billion ringgit and China at 7.9 billion ringgit.
The services sector attracted 57.8 billion ringgit on the approved investment, the authority said.
($1 = 4.2370 ringgit)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Japan and South Korea mark 60 years of ties despite lingering tension and political uncertainty
Japan and South Korea are marking the 60th anniversary of the normalization of their diplomatic relations Sunday. The two Asian powers, rivals and neighbors, have often had little to celebrate, much of their rancor linked to Japan's brutal colonial rule of Korea in the early 20th century. Things have gotten better in recent years, but both nations — each a strong ally of the United States — now face political uncertainty and a growing unease about the future of their ties. Here's a look at one of Northeast Asia's most crucial relationships, from both capitals, by two correspondents from The Associated Press. The view from Seoul, by Kim Tong-hyung South Korea's new liberal president, Lee Jae Myung, is determined to break sharply from the policies of his disgraced predecessor, Yoon Suk Yeol, who now faces a trial on charges of leading an insurrection over his imposition of martial law in December. Relations with Japan, however, are one area where Lee, who describes himself as a pragmatist in foreign policy, may find himself cautiously building on Yoon's approach. Before his removal from office in April, the conservative former president tried to repair relations with Japan. Yoon wanted to also tighten the countries' three-way security cooperation with Washington to counter North Korean nuclear threats. In 2023, Yoon announced a South Korea-funded compensation plan for colonial-era forced laborers. That decision caused a strong backlash from victims and their supporters, who had demanded direct payments from Japanese companies and a fresh apology from Tokyo. Yoon's outreach boosted tourism and business ties, but there's still lingering resentment in South Korea that Japan failed to reciprocate Seoul's diplomatic concession by addressing historical grievances more sincerely. While advocating for pragmatism and problem-solving in foreign policy, Lee has also long criticized Japan for allegedly clinging to its imperialist past and blamed that for hurting cooperation between the countries. Some experts say the stability of the countries' improved ties could soon be tested, possibly around the Aug. 15 anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule at the end of World War II, when Lee is expected to publicly address the nation's painful history with Japan. Some in Seoul want Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba to mark the anniversary with a stronger statement of remorse over Japan's wartime past to put bilateral ties on firmer ground. While wartime history will always linger in the background of Seoul-Tokyo relations, Lee and Ishiba may face a more immediate concern: U.S. President Donald Trump's rising tariffs and other America-first trade policies. South Korea's Hankyoreh newspaper in an editorial this week called for South Korea and Japan to 'collaborate immediately' on a joint response to Trump's policies, arguing that the proposed U.S. tariffs on automobiles pose similar threats to both countries' trade-dependent economies. The view from Tokyo, by Mari Yamaguchi Ishiba, eager to improve ties with Seoul, has acknowledged Japan's wartime aggression and has shown more empathy to Asian victims than his recent predecessors. His first encounter with Lee seemed positive, despite worries in Japan about South Korea's stance under a liberal leader known for attacks on Japan's wartime past. Lee, in that meeting with Ishiba at the G7, likened the two countries to 'neighbors sharing the same front yard' and called for building a future-oriented relationship that moves beyond their 'small differences and disagreements.' Ishiba and Lee agreed to closely communicate and to cooperate on a range of issues, including North Korea's nuclear and missile development. Under a 1965 normalization treaty, Japan provided $500 million in economic assistance to South Korea, saying all wartime compensation issues were settled. However, historical issues including forced labor and sexual abuse of Korean women during the war have disrupted ties over the decades, while South Korea has become an Asian power and a rival to Japan, and while Tokyo, especially during the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe 's rule, has promoted revisionist views. Japan has since offered atonement money twice for the so-called 'comfort women,' an earlier semi-private fund and a second one unilaterally dissolved by former South Korean President Moon Jae-in's liberal government. Things have improved in recent years, and Japan is watching to see whether Lee sticks with his conservative predecessor's more conciliatory diplomacy or returns to the confrontation that marked previous liberal governments. Cooperation between the two sides is 'more essential than ever' to overcome their shared problems such as worsening regional security and Trump's tariffs that have shaken free trade systems, Japan's largest-circulation newspaper Yomiuri said in a recent editorial. At a 60th anniversary reception in Tokyo, Ishiba said that he sees 'a bright future' in the relationship. He expressed hope also for cooperation in 'common challenges' such as low birth rates and declining populations. ___ Kim reported from Seoul, South Korea.
Times
2 hours ago
- Times
Surely there are better steps to growth than 600 million shoes
Terrible news: Britain is doomed to have a puny economic growth rate of about 1 per cent, the CBI said last week. This is just not enough and we should all be very worried about it. But — and I'm probably being a bit slow here — why? I looked up 'economic growth' in the dictionary, and it turns out to mean 'an increase in the amount of goods and services produced'. And then I looked around my house and thought: hang on. Don't we have too much stuff already? I'm a stingy git and don't buy much but, somehow, every room is packed with things I neither want nor need. The pot on my desk holds 23 pens, 22 of which I do not use. The bookshelves hold more books than I have time to count, most of which I have no recollection of reading. The cellar is packed with unused tools, the wardrobe with unworn clothes. It's not just me. There are 1.6 billion items of unworn clothing in British wardrobes, according to the charity Wrap — and despite that, we're expected to buy 61 garments each in 2025. More than 300 million pairs of shoes are sold in the UK every year, despite us having only 69 million pairs of feet. The average child has 238 toys, of which they use about 10 per cent. Between them, our 28 million households buy eight million new TVs a year. You get the point. Yes, some people still have too little: but most of us have stuff coming out of our ears. This is why you can use all those TVs you own to watch an entire genre of programmes dedicated to 'decluttering', so that in between the ads for more stuff to buy, Nick Knowles or Marie Kondo can tell you how to throw out all the stuff you've already bought. Stacey Solomon has one of these shows on the BBC; the other day she was talking to a very nice, normal family who had 87 board games, 358 plastic dolls and 106 animal ornaments. It was horrifying. The correct number of animal ornaments in any given household is zero. The economists say that the NHS will collapse and zombies will roam the land if we don't go on acquiring all these things at an ever-increasing rate and then, when our houses are full up, invite Stacey over to help us throw it all out and start again. This seems an odd and impractical arrangement. Swathes of the country are landfill as it is, and the rest is strewn with fly-tipped old fridges and repulsive mattresses. • CBI warns of triple whammy on slow economic growth What about the services bit of that definition, then? Perhaps we just need more of those? Our biggest industry in that department is financial services, and I'm not certain having twice as many adverts for banks and life insurance will make the nation better off in any meaningful sense. The rest of the sector is mainly pizza and fried chicken, and you've only got to look up and down your street to see there are too many of those. In the 1930s, hunger-related diseases were widespread in the UK. Now obesity causes 30,000 deaths a year. Seems like we're growing, even if the economy isn't. Not that we actually eat all of the food we buy. Back in Merrie England, your average peasant's hovel didn't throw out anything at all except the occasional plague-ridden corpse. Now the UK generates about 10 million tonnes of food waste annually. Earlier this year I had a bash at being a binman on a Coventry council estate. It wasn't an affluent area, but we were tipping weighty wheelie bins full of uneaten leftovers into the truck. I don't want to go back to Merrie England, or the 1930s. On balance, obesity is probably better than starvation. But somewhere along the line there must have been an ideal point between shortage and excess, between a population that staged mass hunger marches and a population that couldn't be arsed to haul its blubbery bulk off the sofa and waddle along to McDonald's, so ordered a Deliveroo instead. My guess is that we cruised blithely past that point without noticing, perhaps some time around 1991. A halcyon, elusive moment when we had enough to eat, but not too much; where we could replace things when they were worn out, but didn't buy loads more of them for the sake of it; where we could embrace useful innovations, but didn't 'upgrade' constantly just because an advert told us we should. I know, I sound like some green weirdo who wants us all to eat nothing but mung beans and get our power from burning the resultant methane-rich flatulence. I really don't. Thanks to the enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, we live in a world with anaesthetics, fish fingers and Netflix, and we can stay breathing to enjoy them for twice as long as we used to. I'm grateful for that. Still, I find it puzzling to be told that, to maintain this state of affairs, we need to buy ever-increasing quantities of stuff of all descriptions: clothes that won't be worn, gadgets that won't be used, dubious vitamin supplements, pointless scented candles, bloodthirsty video games. None of it seems to be making us much happier. What's the answer? No idea. It's got to lie somewhere between the 'buy, buy, buy' unfettered free market nutters and the 'scrimp, scrimp, scrimp' eco-loons who think we can live like hobbits in some pre-industrial Shire, shunning modernity and living off nothing but our own postcolonial guilt. An arrangement where we buy what we really need, and those things are made to last by people who are paid a decent wage for doing so. But it does seem to be awfully hard to organise. In the meantime, I'm not going to worry too much about the growth figures. I'm going to clear out the cellar instead.
The Sun
4 hours ago
- The Sun
Watch moment iconic car maker enters space race after successfully launching reusable rocket
Eliana Nunes Published: Invalid Date, THIS is the spectacular moment one of the world's largest car manufacturers successfully launched a reusable rocket. Honda R&D - the research and development arm of Honda Motor - landed a rocket for the first time on Tuesday - after it reached an altitude of nearly 1,000 feet. 4 The experimental reusable rocket reached an altitude of 890 feet during its test flight - staying aloft for 56.6 seconds. It landed just 14.6 inches from its target touchdown point at the carmaker's test facility in northern Japan, according to Honda. Weighing in at 2,890 pounds when fully fuelled (1,984 pounds dry), the rocket is 20.7 feet tall and measured 2.8 feet in diameter. Honda's rocket has become the first prototype rocket outside the US and China to pull off a flight like this. The company said the launch and landing test demonstrated "key technologies essential for rocket reusability, such as flight stability during ascent and descent, as well as landing capability". The Japanese car manufacturer first revealed in 2021 that it had been working on a rocket engine for at least two years. After six years of development, this successful test marked a major step in Honda's push into space innovation. But Honda is not alone in the race beyond Earth. Other car makers like Geely, GM, Hyundai-Kia, Toyota and Venturi are partnering with space tech companies. Unlike Honda and Venturi that have developed rockets or space vehicles, Toyota has been involved more in robotics and space exploration tech. Vid shows supersonic test launch in bid for 1hr cross-Atlantic flights in 5yrs Geely, GM and Hyundai-Kia are partnering with aerospace firms or investing in space tech startups - rather than independently developing rockets yet. It comes after talk of a merger between car rivals Nissan and Honda collapsed in February. But the door to collaboration remains wide open. Nissan's CEO Ivan Espinosa said in March that the company is "very open" to partnerships. The company's chief performance officer, Guillaume Cartier, said Nissan had "never stopped" talking with its Japanese rival, confirming that the two continue working towards a potential partnership. Espinosa, who officially took over on April 1, said his company faces up to five simultaneous crises - including a damaged brand, low morale and the execution of a sweeping turnaround. Speaking at a company event, he said: "The way we are seeing partners is broadly, not only thinking about cars but how to push Nissan into the next era of technology." Toshihiro Mibe has been the CEO of Honda Motor Co. since 2021.
