Penang is top in attracting investments

Opalyn Mok

newsdesk@thesundaily.com
GEORGE TOWN (Jan 19, 2011): Penang attracted the highest amount of investments in the country last year, recording a total RM12.238 billion, a jump of 465% compared to the total investments in 2009.
In announcing this, Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng, who cited figures obtained from the Malaysian International Development Agency (MIDA), said it was a pleasant shock that Penang came up first last year.
"We did not expect to be the top state with the highest amount of investments, we were thinking that we'd be in second or third place," he said.
Lim, who could not stop beaming when announcing the news, said this once again showed that Penang really takes the lead.
"This is the first time in history that Penang has topped the list of investments amongst all states and has the highest investment received ever," he said.
He attributed the success to the hard work of the 1.6 million Penangites, state government leaders and agencies as well as federal government agencies such as MIDA and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry.
He hoped that Penang's success in attracting investments and re-investments last year will spur more investors to continue investing in Penang and to continue re-investing and staying in Penang instead of moving to another country.
"Our target for last year was to achieve investments of RM4.2 billion so this RM12.238 billion far surpassed our goal," he said, adding that the state government had initially planned to set the investments target for this year at RM4.2 billion but considering the circumstances, they may need to re-assess the situation before setting a goal for this year.
He added that Penang's contribution of RM12.238 billion constitutes 26% of the country's total investments of RM47.177 billion last year.
It was earlier announced that the country recorded a surge of 45% in investment performance last year from RM32.637 billion in 2009 to RM47.177 billion last year.
According to the investment list by MIDA, Penang has a total of 128 projects, half of which are new investments amounting to RM2.846 billion while the other half, amounting to RM9.392 billion were re-investments by existing corporations.
In comparison, in 2009, Penang received a total of 61 new projects amounting to RM1.368 billion and 43 re-investment projects amounting to RM796.9 million bringing the total investments in 2009 to only RM2.165 billion.
Selangor came in a close second for last year, recording a total RM10.641 billion in total investments, out of which, RM4.354 billion were new investments.
Johor is third with total investments of RM7.464 billion out of which RM5.559 billion are new investments.
The ranking is as follows:

Ranking	State	Total investments
1	Penang	RM12.238 billion
2	Selangor	RM10.641 billion
3	Johor	RM7.464 billion
4	Sarawak	RM3.945 billion
5	Perak	RM3.039 billion
6	Terengganu	RM2.327 billion
7	Kedah	RM1.96 billion
8	Malacca	RM1.631 billion
9	Sabah	RM1.325 billion
10	Negri Sembilan	RM1.292 billion
11	Pahang	RM1.038 billion
12	Kelantan	RM169 million
13	Federal Territory	RM55 million
14	Perlis	RM31.4 million
15	Labuan	RM14.9 million