Malaysia Ranked 33rd Out Of 133 Countries In Global Innovation Index 2024 - Chang

PUTRAJAYA, Sept 30 (Bernama) -- Malaysia has emerged 33rd out of 133 countries on the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2024, its highest ranking since 2016, Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Chang Lih Kang.

He said it was an encouraging improvement after being ranked 36th for three years, from 2021 to 2023, adding that Malaysia did not only improve its ranking overall but maintained its excellent performance in several main fields.

“Malaysia remains second among the most innovative countries in the Upper Middle-Income Countries category and is first in three critical sub-indicators - graduates in Science and Engineering, High Technology Exports and Creative Product Exports, while Kuala Lumpur is listed in the 100 World’s Best Science and Technology Clusters for the first time at 93rd place,” he said in a statement here today.

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He added that efforts to strengthen the innovation field were needed as it was a benchmark in proving the country’s ability to compete globally, especially in the fields of science and technology.

“This achievement is an important step to making Malaysia a world-class innovative country. But we cannot stop here, we must continue to explore and invest in innovations that can be translated into sustainable and continuous progress to achieve the MADANI Economy’s goals,” he said.

Chang said that Malaysia needed to continue to boost investment in research and development (R&D), which currently was at Gross Domestic Expenditure on R&D (GERD) of one per cent, and lagged behind developed countries such as South Korea with a rate of 4.93 per cent and Japan with 3.41 per cent.

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“To reach the target of the top 30 in the world by 2025, Malaysia needs to intensify investments in R&D, the government is expected to need to invest around RM26 billion a year and the private sector RM60 billion to achieve the target of GERD 3.5 per cent by 2030,” he said.

He also shared that his ministry would launch the Malaysia Innovation Index (MII), a platform to measure the innovation levels in each state, next year, to enable the implementation of accurate interventions to strengthen innovation ecosystems in the country.

GII, a report issued by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) based in Geneva, Switzerland, in an important index used by countries and multinational companies to assess innovation ecosystems and to aid policy making and investment decisions.

-- BERNAMA