chapter 6 - Malaysia Productivity Corporation ( MPC)

PRODUCTIVITY PERFORMANCE OF THE SERVICES SECTOR
engineering services. The investment will be used
mainly for training engineers from the 40 engineers
trained in 2011 to an anticipated 350 engineers by
2013.
New and upgrading of current facilities to ensure
sufficient data centre floor space to meet increasing
demand has been identified as initiatives to
make Malaysia as a world-class data centre hub.
In another development, collaboration between
local firms and a leading Content Delivery Provider
in the global market had been established. The
partnership aims to draw the attention of major
global content providers to host their content
within the region and build towards positioning
Malaysia as a World-Class Data Centre hub.
Realising the potential of new maintenance, repair
and overhaul (MRO), facility is being developed
in Hyderabad under joint venture partnerships
between Malaysia and foreign firms.
Strategies and Outlook
The drive for greater efficiency is through
outsourcing corporate functions. Instead
of maintaining a large pool of professional
internal staff, organisations are now turning to a
management model where in-house staff merely
coordinates the work of outside vendors. Although
hourly costs for outside professionals are higher,
organisations save money because the professional
services are not required at all times.
Malaysia has gained international recognition as
a role model in many aspects of Islamic finance.
Industry players can expect better prospects
to widen their Islamic finance services in the
intermediation and distribution of wealth across
borders particularly, to emerging economies.
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The shared service and outsourcing (SSO) industries
can become major growth engines for Malaysia.
Malaysia has become the preferred choice for many
international companies which are providing SSO
activities ranging from IT outsourcing, business
process outsourcing and knowledge process
outsourcing at the global level. The reason is due
to its low inflation, higher staff retention, a welleducated
and multilingual workforce, worldclass
infrastructures and conducive business
environment.
TOURISM SERVICES
Overview
Tourism is one of the 12 NKEAs identified under ETP.
With a growing number of amazing and hotspot
attractions, Malaysia has been globally recognised
as among the world’s top tourist destination. The
World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) had ranked
Malaysia as the ninth best place in the world’s top
tourist destinations in 2011 based on tourist arrivals.
The services is an important source of foreign
exchange earner besides providing business
opportunities and jobs creation. It also provides the
multiplier effect to the growing activities in hotels,
restaurants, banking, transportation, shopping
and entertainment. Although a large number of
travellers are leisure tourists, the tourism services
has also diversified into other forms of tourism
products and services such as business tourism,
eco-tourism, agro-tourism, edu-tourism and health
tourism.
Despite the global weak economic performance,
Malaysia was able to register positive growth in
tourism activities in 2011. The number of tourist
arrivals rose to 24.7 million from 24.6 million in 2010.
Similarly, receipts also increased to RM58.3 billion