A STIR of sorts has been caused by the story that foreign direct investment (FDI) into the country for 2009 fell 81% to US$1.4bil (about RM4.5bil) from US$7.3bil (RM24bil).
But really it should not. If we want higher value-added, then labour-intensive industries are not our target. This is the area which many foreign investors like because they can get tremendous cost savings by using cheap labour in places like China, Vietnam etc.
If greater value-added is what we are after, then increasingly more investments have to be made in the services area – think tourism or education for instance. That does not necessarily need foreign investment – we can use local money.
