Malaysia moves to protect local firms as cheap Chinese goods fill market

Malaysia moves to protect local firms as cheap Chinese goods fill market Investment authority chairman Tengku Zafrul Aziz says Putrajaya has to strike a balance between an open economy and helping local firms “We did a sentiment analysis one week before Johor. One of the top five issues is China coming in. The survey was done for politics, we just flipped through [it] last week and [it was] still a major issue,” Zafrul told This Week in Asia. While consumers in Malaysia benefit from cheaper Chinese products and faster services, local SMEs say they are struggling to match mainland competitors’ scale, supply chains and pricing. A survey of business owners and senior managers in November last year by the Associated Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Malaysia found that 45.1 per cent of the 245 respondents were pessimistic about their industry’s ability to compete with Chinese firms over the next five years.