MALAYSIA TO CONTINUE ENHANCING COMPETITIVENESS DESPITE IMPROVEMENT, SAYS MINISTER

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 8 (Bernama)-- Malaysia will continue to strive for
improvement despite achieving the target of being among the top 25 countries in
the latest Global Competitiveness Report by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Minister of International Trade and Industry, Mustapa Mohamed
said the improvement in ranking to 21st spot among 142 countries, is also
confirmation of the people's positive perception of economic prospects and
government in different delivery areas.

"Going forward, we need to improve all 12 pillars, by working harder," he
added.

The 12 pillars are institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic environment,
health and primary education, higher education and training, goods market
efficiency, labour market efficiency, financial market development,
technological readiness, market size, business sophistication and innovation.

Malaysia was in 26th spot in last year's Global Competitiveness report.

Meanwhile, Mustapa said the area of technological readiness locally, still
required more attention as its ranking in this regard had dropped to 44th spot
from 40th previously.

He said the government would maintain its commitment to make improvements
through various initiatives such as the formation of the Special Innovation Unit
(Unik) in January this year.

"Unik has run well for the last eight months and hopefully, we can build
better ecosystems for research and development (R&D) in universities, as well as
the ability to absorb new technologies from abroad," he added.

Mustapa said Unik would also continue to play a critical role in
coordinating all R&D efforts and commercialisation in higher learning
institutions locally as a response to the latest findings.