M'SIA NEEDS TO ENHANCE HIGH-SKILL LABOUR TO WOO FDIs

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 30 (Bernama) -- Malaysia needs to enhance high-skill labour to
attract robust foreign direct investments (FDIs) to the country, especially in
the high-skill intensive operations, says an economist.

Dr Zakariah Abdul Rashid, executive director of Malaysian Institute of Economic
Research (MIER), said beyond 2010 goods export growth and services are expected
to dwindle due to ongoing structural weakness in Malaysia vis-a-vis regional
competitors.

Gross exports decelerated to 6.9 per cent year-on-year in September on lower
global demand.

"We are losing competitivenes vis-a vis other countries in South East Asia," he
said at the National Economic Outlook Conference 2011-2012 here Tuesday.

Dr Zakariah said Malaysia's policy now was to woo FDIs with high-skill intensive
operations but when dealing with that, the country was not able to provide
enough skilled labour to the industries.

"One of the important elements to curb structural weakness is the labour market.
When we want to achieve high growth rate, we must be able to produce and the
most important ingredient is human resource," he said.

On domestic demand, Dr Zakariah said it remained strong due to supportive
government policies and healthy private consumption, while private investment
was slowly recovering.

Indicators of private consumption -- passenger car sales; equity market
capitalisation; and imports of consumption goods -- are firming up.

FDI inflow clinched RM11 billion in the first half of this year compared with
RM5 billion (US$1.584 billion) last year and fiscal support for key mega
investment projects announced in the 2011 Budget