Malaysia approved investments totalling RM285.2 billion in the first nine months of 2025, according to the Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry.
The print is a 13.2% increase from the first-nine-month period a year earlier, reflecting both foreign and domestic investors’ confidence in Malaysia’s political stability and policy direction, said Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz.
“While global capital flows are contracting elsewhere, Malaysia continues to attract quality investments at scale,” Zafrul said in his keynote address at a business conference on Tuesday.
More than half of the investments were from foreign sources. Singapore was the top foreign investor, contributing RM52.7 billion, followed by China and the US. Domestic investments made up 43% of total investments.
About two-thirds of the approved investments were into services and one-third went into the manufacturing sector. The remaining 1% was in primary economic sectors such as mining and agriculture.
“Certainty remains the most valuable currency and it's precisely this reason the Malaysian government continues to prioritise policy, consistency, regulatory clarity and institutional predictability,” Zafrul added.
If realised, the investments spanning over 4,800 projects could create more than 152,000 new jobs, the Malaysian Investment Development Authority (Mida), an agency under the ministry, said in a separate statement on Tuesday.
Mida is in talks for further investments totalling RM39.4 billion that are already at an advanced stage of negotiation, said the agency’s chief executive officer Datuk Sikh Shamsul Ibrahim Sikh Abdul Majid.
"We are no longer just an option in investors' diversification strategies,” he continued, “we are increasingly the preferred choice.”
Source: theedgemalaysia