Determinants of export performance: Malaysian case study / Syed Faliq Fahmi Syed Farouk

Year by year, total trade of our country have increased tremendously and being one of the major revenues to boost up our economy and providing lines of employments throughout the nations. As Malaysia implemented export-oriented development strategy beginning in the 1980s, exporting has been the major vehicle that has transformed Malaysia from a primary commodity based economy to a more industrial based on. Thus it is important to have an idea what are the determinants of Malaysia export performance so that we could focus on these determinants in order for us to stay afoot in today's world of globalization. However, there were few studies have been made worldwide in tackling the question of what are the factors that boost a country's export performance as most of them focused only on firm-level instead of country-level as a whole. Therefore the purpose of this study is to examine the factors that influence the export performance in Malaysia. In addition, this paper also attempts to look at the trends of those determinants and how they affect our country's export performance. Based on some studies made by few international researchers, there are several factors that influence the export performance of a country, which are the Foreign Direct Investment, Real Effective Exchange Rates, trading partners' income and inflation rates This study found out that all four variables mentioned above, have a significant impact on determining what are the factors that boost Malaysia's export performance and it is vital for government to take essential steps in securing this variables to ensure that exports will still be one of Malaysia's most important revenue generators.