The weakness of the ringgit has a big impact on Malaysia’s position in the Global Competitiveness IMD 2024 – Tengku Zafrul

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s drop to 34th in the IMD World Competitiveness Ranking 2024 is due to the weakness of the ringgit last year, said Minister of Investment, Trade, and Industry, Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz.

He said based on the ministry’s preliminary study, the main issue that resulted in the country’s position falling from 27th was the use of data in 2023 to measure the country’s competitiveness.

“It (the report) is based on last year’s data, 2023, compared to 2022, so it is one year behind there. The factor that has the most significant impact is the stability of the ringgit, as highlighted in the ranking,” he said after inaugurating the Centralized Sustainability Intelligence (CSI) Solution on Bursa Malaysia today.

Commenting further, Tengku Zafrul said the weakness of the ringgit last year had various implications, including the assessment of investment, productivity, and efficiency, which are closely related to the value of the currency, further reflecting concerns about economic stability.

“As is known, the ringgit was affected in 2023, and that affected our competitiveness, but now the ringgit has strengthened, and if the same momentum continues, the position should improve,” he said.

“This is in line with the slowdown in trade around the world, but this year we can see the sector improving.

“Now, the volume of trade has increased significantly—about more than 10 percent in May 2024,” he said.

Malaysia dropped seven places to rank 34th out of 67 countries in the IMD World Competitiveness Ranking 2024, after being ranked 27th in the index last year.

In the Asia-Pacific region, Malaysia dropped four places to rank 10th out of 14 countries.