Matrade: Malaysia to further expand exports to Asean, Africa

JOHOR BARU: Malaysia wants to further expand and strengthen its exports to Asean and African countries as they offered good business opportunities and growth prospects for local exporters.

Malaysia External Trade Development Corp (Matrade) chairman Datuk Noraini Ahmad said the export markets to Asean and African countries were big enough for exporters including those from Malaysia.

“Our exporters should put in more efforts to penetrate into countries with huge population base like Asean and Africa with the right products,’’ she told reporters after opening the business opportunities in halal industry in Japan here.

Based on the latest United Nations statistics on March 14, 2017, Asean countries have 644 million people while the current population of Africa is 1.23 billion people as of March 14, this year.

The one-day seminar was jointly organised by Matrade, Johor Entrepreneur Development Centre and Japan External Trade Organisation (Jetro).

Also present were Matrade southern region director Raphy Md Radzi and Jetro managing director Akira Kajita.

Noraini said Japan was the largest trading partner with Malaysia with a total value at RM120.26bil. It was Malaysia’s fourth largest export destination worth RM63.28bil and third largest source of imports at RM56.98bil.

“In 2014, we exported RM2.18bil halal products to Japan and the figure went up to RM2.21bil in 2015 and in the first nine months of last year, it stood at RM1.70bil,’’ she said.

Noraini said the main halal products exported to Japan were halal ingredients (RM789.5mil), food and beverages (RM637.77mil), palm oil derivatives (RM147.23mil), cosmetics and personal care (RM72.41mil), industrial chemical (RM52.76mil) and pharmaceutical (RM5.28mil).

She said halal business opportunities would be great at the Tokyo summer Olympics 2020, with 27 million tourists expected to visit Japan during the world’s biggest sporting event, of with one million of them were Muslims.