GEORGE TOWN: Malaysian Investment Development Authority (Mida) expects total investment in the electronics and electrical (E&E) sector this year to exceed RM5bil from about RM4.7bil in 2009.

Mida chairman Tan Sri Sulaiman Mahbob said total investment for the first nine months of this year was RM4.3bil, of which about RM3.8bil was from overseas.

The total investment for manufacturing for the January-September period is RM21bil. We expect the figure to reach about RM32bil by the end of 2010, which is about the same as in 2009, he said after launching a seminar cum business networking session for the electronics industry in Malaysia yesterday.

He added that the top investors were from the United States, Germany, Japan, and Taiwan.

Mida was negotiating to bring in fresh investments for solar power, wireless communication, cloud computing and light-emitting diodes industries next year, Sulaiman said.

For the first nine months of this year, the E&E industry exported an estimated RM187.4bil or 39.5% of the total export of manufactured goods, he said.

Sulaiman said the E&E sector was expected to raise the gross national income by RM53bil to RM90bil by 2020 and provide an additional 157,000 jobs, both medium and high skilled.

On the proposed corporatisation of Mida, Sulaiman said the plan was to enable Mida to approve and obtain faster incentives for foreign companies wanting to invest in Malaysia.

Under the new corporatised body, we also look at providing promotional activities for the services sector, which do not include the financial and utilities services, he said.

On the shortage of skilled labour in the country, Sulaiman said: We are always ready to help bring in skilled labour from overseas. We can also tap skilled labour from local universities, collaborate with them and help revise their curriculum to enable them to produce more skilled labour, he said.

- The Star Online