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The five-year plan is also targeting to provide 50,000 high-value jobs in the MSC, Malaysia’s high-technology business district.
To enhance Malaysia’s digital economy by 2025, the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) is looking at its Digital Investments Future5 (DIF5) Strategy to secure high quality digital investments from overseas, the organisation announced on Monday (19 July).
DIF5 is a five-year plan focusing on five key pillars aimed at attracting investments, and advancing Malaysia’s digital economy in line with the Malaysia Digital Economy Blueprint, or MyDIGITAL.
The DIF5 strategy targets to achieve the following by 2025:
- RM50bn investments in the digital economy;
- Focus on five key industry sectors, five focus technologies, five emerging technologies, and digital global business services (listed below);
- Attract 50 Fortune500 tech companies to land and expand in Malaysia;
- Establishment of five Unicorns, i.e. a private company with over a billion in valuation; and
- Creation of 50,000 high-value jobs in the MSC.
“We have all the necessary capabilities, capacities and facilities to drive Malaysia’s digital economy into high gear and with the Future5 Investment Strategy, we are further synergising our efforts and initiatives to push the nation forward towards achieving the goals set forth in the Malaysia Digital Economy Blueprint (MyDIGITAL),” said Raymond Siva, Senior Vice President of Investment and Brand, MDEC.
Industry sectors
According to MDEC, the five industry sectors that have been identified as key drivers are: agtech, healthtech, Islamic digital economy and fintech, cleantech, and edutech.
“These industries are based on the strategic national industries for digitalisation and have also been mapped to the national priority sectors,” MDEC explained.
“Digitalisation of these industries will have a high impact on investment, jobs, and contribution to GDP.”
Focus technologies
Cloud computing, data centre, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and digital content tools are the five technologies MDEC is focusing on with the DIF5 strategy.
“Attracting and driving investments in five focus technologies are important to facilitate the growth of these [aforementioned] sectors,” MDEC shared.
Emerging technologies
The DIF5 Strategy, MDEC said, will also be focusing on five key emerging technologies to drive innovation and ensure Malaysia will be at the forefront of the rapid evolution of digital technologies and development of a future-ready digital economy.
These technologies are: blockchain, dronetech, edge computing, extended reality, and advanced robotics.
MDEC explained: “These will increase the economic complexity of the nation, and help develop new and existing economic clusters which in turn creates high value job opportunities, and extend domestic economic linkages.”
Digital global business services
With regard to DIF5’s last focus, digital global business services, MDEC will encourage the use of robotic process automation and data analytics as well as knowledge engineering.
More Centres of Expertise (CoE), MDEC added, will be established to enable the workforce to move up the value chain to form the next generation of tech talents to fuel the next evolution of customer experience and employee efficiencies in the digital economy.
The DIF5 strategy will prove pivotal for Malaysia in the long run – as MDEC shared that the digital economy “is expected to continue its significant contribution to the country in 2021.”
This statement was based on an estimated 20% contribution to Malaysia’s GDP in 2020 by the Department of Statistics Malaysia, on the back of a 6.7% economic growth forecast this year by the World Bank.
In fact, the Malaysia Digital Economy Blueprint (MyDIGITAL) also projects a 22.6% contribution to GDP by 2025, should DIF5 achieve RM70bn worth of investments, and open up no less than 50,000 jobs within the digital economy.
Related news: MDEC launches RM100mn training and hiring incentive programme to boost Malaysia's digital economy
Image / 123RF
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