SUNGAI PETANI, March 17 — Malaysia needs to develop new growth areas, including the renewable energy and electric vehicle (EV) sectors, to increase the demand for semiconductor chips in this country.
Malaysian Investment Development Authority (Mida) deputy chief executive officer (investment development) Lim Bee Vian said the demand would strengthen Malaysia's economic growth as one of the main suppliers in the global semiconductor chain.
"Malaysia (despite) being a small country contributes between 12 per cent and 13 per cent to the global chip supply. So we are important in that sense.
"We should promote the EV sector as a new growth area because this sector will help increase the demand for chips," she said during a press conference and a meeting between EG Industries Bhd and Mida on Smart Warehouse and International Procurement Centre (IPC) here today.
Lim added that IT infrastructure services and solutions is another area that requires focus, to ensure the demand for chips remains high.
The awareness among industry players on the need to adopt smart warehousing is growing because it improves efficiency.
"The investment for smart warehousing is high. Big companies are moving in that direction, especially big logistics companies. Small companies may have certain elements of smart warehousing but these are not fully integrated.
"Mida encourages companies to upgrade their warehouses because this will help decrease the need for foreign labour to run their warehousing operations and also to raise efficiency," she said.
— Bernama
