KUALA LUMPUR, July 27 ― Malaysia’s micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) achieved a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of 11.6 per cent in 2022, surpassing the national GDP growth of 8.7 per cent, said the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DoSM).

Chief statistician Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin said the surge showed the growing significance of MSMEs in driving economic expansion.

"Contribution of MSMEs to the GDP also increased to 38.4 per cent compared to 37.4 per cent in 2021, while the value added amounted to RM580.4 billion, marking a substantial increase from RM520.0 billion in 2021,” he said in a statement today.

Services and manufacturing sectors uphold their position as the main contributors to MSMEs’ GDP, accounting for an 84.6 per cent share.

"In addition, MSMEs’ GDP increased to RM670.1 billion in nominal terms against the reported figure of RM575.5 billion in 2021, with the MSMEs’ performance in 2022 exceeding the pre-pandemic level in 2019,” Mohd Uzir said.

The chief statistician also noted that MSMEs’ exports totalled RM144.5 billion in 2022, expanded to 16.3 per cent as compared to 5.4 per cent in the preceding year, driven by the manufacturing sector with 19.5 per cent as well as the services sector, which rebounded to 5.7 per cent.

"However, the agriculture sector recorded a slower growth of 6.2 per cent as compared to 20.4 per cent in 2021,” he said, adding that exports of MSMEs represented 10.5 per cent of total exports in 2022, comprising the manufacturing (8.3 per cent), services (2.0 per cent) and agriculture (0.2 per cent).

Commenting on MSMEs’ employment situation, Mohd Uzir Mahidin said the contribution to Malaysia’s employment in 2022 was 48.2 per cent, which rose 0.4 percentage points from 47.8 per cent in the previous year.

"During the same period, the number of MSMEs’ employment continued to record a larger year-on-year increase with a growth of 3.8 per cent, registering a total of 7.59 million persons,” he said.

By economic activity, MSMEs’ employment increased in all sectors except for the agriculture sector, which declined by 0.4 per cent, comprising 788 thousand persons or 42.3 per cent of the overall agriculture sector employment.

Meanwhile, DoSM said that MSMEs’ labour productivity as measured by value added per employment grew 7.5 per cent in 2022 as compared to 0.5 per cent in the preceding year, recording a value of RM76,433 per person, surpassing the pre-pandemic value in 2019 of RM75,625 per person. ― Bernama