In a statement today, the Statistics Department said the report provided information on the current scenario of Malaysia’s trade with China.
Chief statistician Mohd Uzir Mahidin said the MTSR Volume II aims to emphasise Malaysia’s bilateral trade performance with its biggest partner, China.
“This report includes the trade performance of goods, such as major exports and imports, trade composition, the impact of Covid-19 on Malaysia-China trade, direct investment between both countries, performance of the manufacturing sector and other related data,” he said.
He said China rose to fourth place as Malaysia’s largest trading partner in 2001 from eighth place a year before. It became the country’s largest trading partner in 2009.
“The two-way trade value between Malaysia and China reached RM316.6 billion in 2019 and constituted 17.2% of Malaysia’s trade,” he said.
Uzir said Malaysia received investments from China amounting to RM600 million and RM500 million in 2018 and 2019, respectively, while Malaysia’s investment flows to China stood at RM540 million in 2019 and RM500 million in 2018.
“Malaysia may enhance, as well as further streamline the foreign investment policy, to facilitate business networks and strategic alliances between Malaysian companies and China companies and state-owned enterprises,” he said.
“Interestingly, the Covid-19 outbreak has boosted the demand for medical supplies by both countries. This contributed to a significant increase in exports and imports of selected products between the countries,” he said.
He said exports of rubber gloves, for instance, recorded a tremendous growth of 123.3% for the first 10 months of 2020 and imports of face masks soared by 862.7%.
“In addition, Malaysia signed the historic Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement with 14 other participating countries on Nov 15, 2020. RCEP is the largest free-trade agreement in the world.
“Thus, Malaysia should take this opportunity to further strengthen bilateral trade with China as both are members of RCEP,” he added.