National Trade Blueprint

45 National Trade Blueprint Driving Growth Through Investment and Export Diversification Thrust 7: 8 Strategic Thrusts Objective / Pain points Achieve diversification to inject resilience into Malaysian exports. Enable and encourage large firms to diversify their export activities. Key Stakeholders: MITI (Lead), MATRADE Implementation timeline : Long-term Action plans 1. Expand the existing market development grants to cover expenses for companies which have exhausted their threshold to pursue further product and market diversification 2. Intensify existing efforts which encourage Malaysian exporters to diversify beyond their current product offerings a) Promote success stories of MNCs. b) Facilitate Mid-Tier Companies (MTCs) in identifying diversification opportunities. c) Engage MTCs to address challenges and provide required assistance. 3. Continue to support Malaysian exporting firms to engage with and navigate fast-growing emerging markets, such as countries in African regions and second-tier cities. a) Intensify efforts in International Sourcing Programme (INSP), trade missions, and trade fairs (virtual or physical). b) Facilitate access to local physical marketplaces and e-commerce platforms in target markets. c) Develop export strategy plans for key cities, which includes risk management in new markets. 4. Promote the popular tax incentives, while re-evaluating the tax- incentives which has a lower uptake. 5. Conduct a study to identify the potential of barter trade to grow exports in tier 2 & 3 cities Objective / Pain points Increase Malaysia’s export value through the provision of high value products and bundling of services. To steer Malaysia’s product development towards high-value, high technology goods. Key Stakeholders: MITI (Lead), MIDA, MATRADE, Regional Economic Corridors, Industry Associations Implementation timeline: Long-term Action plans 1. Continue to promote high technology and high value-added manufacturing. a) Push existing industrial parks to focus on specialised manufacturing activities. b) Incentivise the exporting of high-value products. This can be done through providing incentives on purchase of equipment that process materials that goes into producing high-value products. 2. Provide support that would enable SMEs to undertake specialisation and product bundling with services. a) Capacity building programmes to encourage SMEs to expand from singular to multi-dimension product offerings (e.g. vertical integration). b) Government to collaborate with financial institutions to communicate general direction and promote specialisation activities. 3. Facilitate avenues to promote niche Malaysian products abroad and strengthen international links. a) MATRADE can identify key global events and identify relevant exporters of niche products to participate in these events. Accessing new areas of growth to diversify products and market base 7.2 Focus on high value, low volume products, and bundle products and services to sell solutions 7.3