Foreign investment to continue flowing into Malaysia

Foreign investments are likely to continue flowing into Malaysia, with more money entering the capital market, said Datuk Yusli Mohamed Yusoff, Chief Executive Officer of Bursa Malaysia Bhd.

“We are seeing keen interest from foreign funds as well as the locals in the Malaysian market and we hope that this interest will continue,” he said.

Bursa Malaysia had several good quality stocks to offer and it hoped that investors could see value in these firms, he added.

“Certainly there is a lot of interest in this region and hopefully Malaysia will get a fair share of it from the foreign investors,” he said at the listing ceremony of Maxwell International Holdings Bhd.

The inflow of foreign funds began in September and the stock exchange expects that more money will flow this year.

“The foreign funds are looking at the fundamentals of the companies. We will continue to focus on governance, transparency and investors protection as these are very important factors for all the stakeholders,” he said.

Hopefully, the companies will receive the recognition they deserve from the investors, he added.

The recent rally and the encouraging sentiment in the market were attributed to the influx of foreign funds into the market.

Based on the Trade Statistics in Bursa Malaysia’s website, foreign institutional participation in the market was 26.62 percent of the RM35.7 billion traded in the market in 2010.

Terence Wong, Research Head at CIMB, said foreign funds would continue to trickle into the market as the country remained under-owned.

Foreign investors were interested in big caps such as banks, construction and plantations, but the inflow was not region-wide and not country-specific, said Mr. Wong.