Average Monthly Salary of Malaysians in 2025

 

The total number of monthly salary and wage earners rose to 12.01 million, up from 11.96 million in 2024. Malaysians accounted for 10.38 million, or 86.4% of all full-time paid employees. The average monthly salary and wage of Malaysians increased by 4.1% to RM3,803 in 2025, compared with RM3,652 the previous year, according to the Salaries and Wages Survey Report 2025 published by the Department of Statistics (“DOSM”). The median monthly salary and wage increased by 5.3% to RM2,940 from RM2,793 in 2024. 

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org

The services sector, which represents 71.5%, was the main contributor to the increase in the number of wage earners, rising by 1.8% to 7.42 million people. Meanwhile, mining and quarrying had the highest average monthly salary and wage at RM6,175, followed by services (RM3,993), manufacturing (RM3,357), construction (RM3,188) and agriculture (RM2,575), according to DOSM. 

In terms of skills, skilled workers, accounted for 36.6% of all salary earners, recorded the highest average monthly salary and wage at RM5,799, compared with RM5,582 in 2024. The semi-skilled category, which accounted for 55.6% of salary earners, recorded a 4.2% increase in average salary to RM2,714 from RM2,604, while the low-skilled category rose by 2.6% to RM2,184 from RM2,128. 

Selangor recorded the highest share of salary earners, at 25.6% of the total number of paid Malaysian workers, followed by Johor (13.6%) and Sarawak (7.6%). Five states recorded average monthly salaries and wages above the national level: Putrajaya (RM5,417), Kuala Lumpur (RM4,955), Selangor (RM4,258), Penang (RM3,912) and Labuan (RM3,887). 

It looks pathetic. With rising cost of living the average wage may not be sufficient to survive in large urban areas. Employers who are generous are few and far between. Large banks, for example, make RM4 billion a year but employees at mid-level or low-level are paid below satisfactory level. The next stage will be AI. The use of AI soon will result in many jobs including counter clerks, transaction officers and credit officers becoming irrelevant. The digital wave is going to affect many industries, and some will have to re-skill for the future. 

Reference:

Average monthly salary of Malaysians up 4.1% to RM3,803 in 2025, FMT, 21 Sept 2026

Littoral Combat Ships or Littoral Cruise Ships?

 

The littoral combat ship (LCS) project is running behind schedule again with weaknesses found in its implementation. According to the Auditor-General's Report Series 2/2026 tabled in Parliament on Monday (Oct 5), the project was 7.55% behind schedule as of 25 June 2026. All five LCS vessels experienced completion delays ranging from 30 to 108 days. 

If the physical handover (PHO) takes place by 26 December 2026, it will be handed over without achieving full operational capability, as training and the weapons systems have yet to be completed. Full operational readiness of the vessels depends on the complementary contract, which can only be completed in December 2035, beyond the expiry of the main contract on April 25, 2030. 

The report said the PHO delay of LCS 1 would affect the handover of the remaining vessels. The procurement was carried out through direct negotiation. The construction of six LCS vessels, with an original contract value of RM9.128bil and a contract period of 10 years, was from Oct 3, 2013, to Oct 2, 2023. 

During the implementation, eight supplementary contracts to the main contract were signed to amend and align the contractual terms with the requirements of the project’s implementation. Following these supplementary contracts, the construction scope now involves five LCS vessels, with a contract value of RM11.227bil and the contract period extended until April 25, 2030,". The payment mechanism has also been restructured from being milestone-based to progress-based. 

Cumulative payments under the main contract amounted to RM8.557bil, or 76.22% of the RM11.227bil contract value, leaving a balance of RM2.670bil. For the procurement of the complementary contract, the government had made payments of RM100mil for the procurement of integrated logistics support and trial aids (ILS-TA) and 124.35mil euros for the surface-to-surface missile (SSM) system. No payments had been made for the procurement of the surface-to-air missile (SAM), ammunition (for the) 3P medium calibre gun (3P MCG) and integrated decoy launching system (IDLS), as the procurements had yet to be finalised.

In response to the audit findings, the Defence Ministry said the technical committee had instructed the contractor to take appropriate action to ensure that work progress remains in line with the stipulated targets. 

The Auditor-General recommended that the ministry establish a realistic recovery action plan to ensure that all critical activities under the main contract and complementary contract are coordinated with the scheduled PHO of the LCS vessels. It also recommended that the ministry ensure any conditional acceptance of the vessels clearly sets out the contractor’s obligations, completion timelines and responsibilities until the vessels achieve the stipulated capabilities. It also called for the project progress monitoring to be strengthened by setting milestones, designating officers responsible and establishing completion timelines for each critical issue until the project is successfully completed. 

Contract value has increased; number of vessels to deliver is now five instead of six; LCS 1 if handed over in December 2026, will not have any weapons – just the boat! Maybe we could do a cruise ship for peace instead of a defence ship for war! Why do we get into this muddle? Because of greed and corruption? Because of poor project management? Because we awarded contract to the wrong party? Or, all of the above? AG is very kind, please set a recovery plan, o a unconditional acceptance of ships and have proper progress reviews or monitoring via milestones! Wonder if by the time we receive an operational ship by 2035, will it be obsolete? 

 

Source: Auditor General’s Report 2/2026 

Reference:

Auditor-General's Report: LCS project behind schedule again, Ragananthini Vethasala, Divya Theresa Ravi and Gerard Gimino, 05 Oct 2026

 

BRICS Power!

 

BRICS is no longer just a group of countries. It is becoming a significant economic bloc.

A quick look at the numbers makes the scale interesting. The expanded BRICS group represents economies with very different sizes, structures and strengths.

China → $20.85T
India → $3.96T
Russia → $2.66T
Brazil → $2.64T
Indonesia → $1.54T
Saudi Arabia → $1.39T
UAE → $621.5B
South Africa → $480B
Egypt → $429.6B
Iran → $300.3B
Ethiopia → $121.5B

Together, the infographic puts their combined GDP at around $34.99 trillion.

But the more interesting part is not just the total.

It is the diversity.

Different markets.
Different resources.
Different industries.
Different growth stories.

And together, they represent a growing part of the global economic landscape. 

 

Reference:

Post by Pragya Bothra on LinkedIn

Global Trade Power is Concentrated!

 

The world’s largest exporters remain dominated by a small group of economic powerhouses. According to the figures presented in this WTO-sourced visualization:

🇨🇳 China — $3.8T
🇺🇸 United States — $2.2T
🇩🇪 Germany — $1.8T
🇳🇱 Netherlands — $939B
🇯🇵 Japan — $738B
🇮🇹 Italy — $726B
🇰🇷 South Korea — $709B
🇦🇪 UAE — $707B
🇫🇷 France — $683B
🇲🇽 Mexico — $665B

But export rankings tell only part of the story.

For investors, corporates and governments, the more important question is where the next generation of trade flows, infrastructure requirements and industrial capacity will emerge.

Several structural themes stand out:

-China remains the central manufacturing and export powerhouse, despite continued diversification of global supply chains.

-The United States is accelerating industrial investment, supported by technology, energy and advanced manufacturing.

-Europe remains exceptionally important to global trade, with Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, France and Belgium among the leading exporters.

-Mexico and Southeast Asia are gaining strategic importance as companies redesign supply chains and pursue nearshoring and “China+1” strategies.

-The UAE is becoming an increasingly important global trade, logistics and energy hub, connecting Asia, Africa and Europe.

-Energy, commodities, ports, logistics, manufacturing and trade finance remain essential infrastructure behind these flows.

The largest opportunities may not necessarily be in the countries exporting the most today. They may be found in the economies attracting the next wave of manufacturing, logistics infrastructure, energy investment, processing capacity and cross-border capital. Capital increasingly follows trade corridors. And understanding how those corridors are changing can provide an important indication of where future investment opportunities may emerge.

 

 

Reference:

INVEST | Connecting Capital. Opportunities. Markets, LinkedIn

NGO Wants Bumi Equity Raised to 50%!

 

NGO Pertubuhan Negarawati Tanah Air has apparently called for Bumiputera equity ownership to be raised to 50% in line with the growing Bumiputera population. Demanding serious attention from the government of the day, Bibi Sunita Sakandar Khan who is chairman of the all-Malay women movement said the current 30% target should not remain an unfulfilled, long-standing objective.

 

While the Bumiputera Economic Transformation Plan 2035 (PuTERA35) has set the target of increasing Bumiputera equity ownership by individuals and Bumiputera mandated agencies to 30% by 2035, data from the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) for 2025 shows that Bumiputera make up 70.5 % of Malaysian citizens.

 

 

Given that Bumiputera constitute over 70% of the citizenry, it is reasonable for the government to assess whether a long-term economic aspiration higher than 30% is needed, the Parti Wawasan Negara supreme council member justified in her Budget 2027 wish-list to Malay language news portal TV Pertiwi. If Bumiputera form most citizens, why should the ambition for economic mastery stop at 30%? We don’t wish for the 30% figure to be passed down from one generation to the next as a target that is constantly cited but never realised. Unfortunately, I can’t see why 50% is easier to achieve?

 

Interestingly, Malay netizens felt ashamed with the NGO’s demand with one rightly pointed out that non-Bumi toiled hard without governmental assistance to earn a living. Another felt that the demand by Pertubuhan Negarawati Tanah Air was unjust even if the current 30% Bumiputera equity quota is mandated by law.

 

This is not a feasible policy from an investment perspective. If only 50% were to provide output while the balance is on a “free ride”, there will be less private investment (DDI or FDI) going forward. Further, no significant discussion is taking shape as to the current level, who benefits, and why has it failed to-date. The actual Bumiputra equity participation in the economy is probably 40-45%.

 

Madani must be clear on NEP 2.0 and work-out a plan that benefits underprivileged groups with educational, employment and entrepreneurial opportunities rather than a single figure that is neither achievable nor realistic.

 

Reference:

Malay women’s NGO wants Bumi equity raised to 50% in line with diminishing non-Bumi populace, Focus Malaysia, 14 Sept 2026

Proton vs Perodua: And the Winner is…

 

For over a decade, Perodua lapped Proton so routinely that the only suspense was the size of the winning margin. But a change appears to be taking shape. In the first half of 2026, Proton registered 98,010 new vehicles, a jump of 40.5% and its best first half since 2002. Perodua still led comfortably with 158,295 units, but its sales slipped 4.7%.

 

A year ago, Perodua was outselling Proton by 2.4 cars to one. Today it is 1.6 to one, the closest the two have been since 2013. Together, the national brands now command 67% of the Malaysian market, leaving every foreign carmaker to squabble over the rest.

 

              

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org

 

Perodua’s cars are built on the bones of Japan’s Daihatsu, a Toyota subsidiary. Proton, meanwhile, has been 49.9% owned by China’s Geely since 2017, and its bestsellers began life as Geely models. The X50 born as the Binyue and the X70 as the Boyue. Strip away the badges and this is almost like a proxy war: Japanese car-making versus Chinese car-making, fought on Malaysian roads with Malaysian wallets as the prize.

 

If you go back to 2017, Proton was in the doldrums. Its market share near historic lows and its finances under strain. Then Geely took its stake, and the transformation has been remarkable. Proton closed 2025 with 157,976 units sold and a 19.4% market share, alongside record exports. It is now gunning for 200,000 units in 2026. In January, it posted its highest monthly sales in 15 years.

 

The sharpest weapon in its arsenal is electric. The Proton e.MAS 7, a twin of the Geely Galaxy E5, was Malaysia’s bestselling EV through 2025. The e.MAS brand was the fastest in the country, to cross 20,000 electrified vehicle sales. This is under seven months. The cheaper e.MAS 5 pulled in more than 10,000 bookings within weeks of launch.

 

In 2025, China exported 8.32 million vehicles, its third straight year as the world’s largest car exporter. BYD alone sold 4.6 million vehicles globally, more than Ford.

 

To its credit, Perodua is not standing still. In December 2025, it launched the QV-E, billed as Malaysia’s first homegrown EV, developed for RM800 million with over 100 local engineers working on it and priced at RM80,000 with a battery subscription plan. And Perodua’s fundamentals remain formidable. It sold a record 359,904 vehicles in 2025, making it the second biggest carmaker in Asean by sales, behind only Toyota. The Bezza, Axia and Myvi still own the affordable end of the market, and no one matches its cost discipline.

 

But notice the irony. The company built on Japanese engineering had to develop its own EV largely from scratch, because its Japanese partner had little to offer. Daihatsu has no ready-made passenger EV for Perodua to borrow, while Proton simply picks from Geely’s shelf.

Malaysians are getting better cars at better prices than at any point in our history, and the fight for our ringgit is forcing both companies to improve.

 

Proton’s Geely partnership has also brought real industrial capacity, with Malaysia’s first dedicated EV plant opening in Tanjung Malim in September 2025, inside an Automotive High-Tech Valley meant to anchor an entire supply chain.

 

The lesson of Japan, South Korea and China themselves is that every great car industry started by borrowing someone else’s homework. The trick is graduating from assembling other people’s ideas to generating your own, and the QV-E, whatever its commercial fate, shows the ambition is alive.

 

So, watch the sales charts closely over the next 18 months. If Proton keeps growing at this pace, 2027 could bring something once unthinkable: a Chinese-engineered car dethroning a Japanese-engineered one as Malaysia’s favourite.

 

After a decade of a one-horse race, the battle for Malaysia’s driveways is finally worth watching again. And whichever badge takes the chequered flag, the Malaysian driver wins. But for the Malaysian car sector to win, we need a eco-system that has the design, engineering and production capabilities of a fully localised Malaysian car. After 40 plus years, these two national cars still require protection. That’s a shame. Surely after 40 years, you should be able to do your own production and export unless you are Hindustan Motors (India) producing the Ambassador – which is no longer available.

 

Reference:

Proton vs Perodua: and the winner is… the Malaysian driver, K. Kathirgugan, FMT,
26 August 2026

Shouldn’t Malaysians Say “Enough is Enough”?

 

In 2022, after Umno president was acquitted of 40 charges relating to the foreign visa system (VLN) contract, he declared: “I had faith in the judiciary ‘since day one’.” But when former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak’s SRC International case went through the appeals process, and with the Federal Court finally upholding his conviction and sentence, the tone changed. 

Najib was convicted by the High Court on July 28, 2020. On Dec 8, 2021, a three-member Court of Appeal panel chaired by Abdul Karim Abdul Jalil unanimously upheld his conviction and sentence. The other judges were Has Zanah Mehat and Vazeer Alam Mydin Meera. 

Source: https://www.psthatslife.com/when-enough-is-enough/ 

In August 2022, the Federal Court heard his final appeal. The five-judge bench was chaired by then-chief justice Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat. The other members were chief judge of Sabah and Sarawak Abang Iskandar Abang Hashim and senior judges P Nallini, Mary Lim Thiam Suan, and Zabidin Diah. It was an unanimous decision that the evidence led during the trial points overwhelmingly to guilt on all seven charges. 

“We demand (sic) that he be given justice in court. We demand that fair justice is given to Datuk Seri Najib,” Zahid thundered at the UMNO general assembly. The phrases “fair trial” and “justice” have been misused interchangeably ever since Najib was first charged in 2018. 

All this, despite Najib being described as a “national embarrassment” by the Court of Appeal, and despite then High Court judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah’s judgment in the 1MDB case. The judge described Najib’s plundering of state-owned 1MDB as graver than the acts of Attila the Hun, because his role in one of the world’s greatest financial scandals resulted in enormous debts of tens of billions of ringgit that generations of Malaysians will have to bear. In an 810-page written judgment, Sequerah said Najib had leveraged the vast powers bestowed on him by his “exalted positions” as prime minister, finance minister, and chairman of 1MDB’s board of advisers to enable the audacious theft at the strategic investment company. The scale of the 1MDB scandal involving Najib was so vast that it made “Attila the Hun look like a choirboy by comparison”. 

Yet, the Umno charade continues, as if Najib’s pardon - like other privileges for selected politicians - were an entitlement that lesser mortals should not question. Najib has not expressed regret or remorse; he has never apologised for his role in the losses suffered by us, the Malaysian taxpayers, who continue to pay for his excesses and his dealings with Low Taek Jho, better known as Jho Low. 

As of March 2023, the government had paid RM43.8 billion of 1MDB’s obligations, while a further RM9.7 billion remain outstanding, comprising RM5 billion in principal and RM4.7 billion in interest. Public discussion of accountability cannot be separated from the financial burden ultimately borne by the state and, by extension, taxpayers. Even after tens of billions of ringgit had been paid, substantial liabilities remained. 

The central question in any debate about clemency, pardon, or accountability is therefore not only whether a punishment has been served, but also how society weighs the magnitude of the financial consequences against principles of justice, responsibility, and public trust. Redemption is atoning for guilt, a fault, or a mistake. Najib has yet to admit wrongdoing or express remorse, despite the Federal Court affirming the guilty verdicts passed by the courts below in the SRC International case. 

And to a greater extent, many have refused to accept that Najib misused public funds, refusing to accept the adage - if you do the crime, you must do the time. But a clear message has to be sent: the larger the loss, the higher the threshold many citizens believe should apply when considering exceptional relief. And the higher the status, the more severe the punishment should be. Shouldn’t Malaysians say clearly “enough is enough”, especially at the coming GE16? 

Reference:

COMMENT | Malaysians have the right to say 'no' to Umno-style justice, R Nadeswaran, Malaysiakini, Sep 16, 2026