The Malaysian Government through the national Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) is creating an infrastructure that will be conducive to the development of high value adding content to meet the unprecedented global and domestic demand for content as the result of convergence of computing, telecommunications and electronics. The objective is to put Malaysia’s innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship at the forefront of the global multimedia content supply chain and to make this industry an engine of growth (and contributor to our national GDP).
Fresh from the Malaysian Government’s announcement of its plans to develop a singular digital content industry strategy as revealed under the ETP. FINAS (under the Ministry of Information, Communication and Culture) in collaboration with MDeC is set to place full commitment and dedicated efforts in promoting Malaysia’s creative content and application businesses. As the global consumer spending is estimated to be worth US$ 1.7 trillion (Price Waterhouse Coopers), the Malaysian Government is aggressively enhancing its plans and strategies to be able to target and capture a significant share of the anticipated expansion value of estimated US$ 470 billion in Asia-Pacific alone. Under the “MY Creative Content” parallel to the ETP initiative, Malaysia targets to achieve a Gross National Income (GNI) of US$ 1 billion by 2020, creation of 10,300 jobs, and secure an export of 45% of its GNI targets.
Today, Malaysia has developed its industry into a very strong positioning where its local content demand is now bringing significant revenue to many local animation and film producers, as well as becoming “exportable quality” contents worldwide, eg. The Malay Chronicles: Bloodlines, SeeFood, Geng: The Adventure Begins, Saladin: An Animated Series, Bola Kampung, Bala Bowl, Supa Strikas, Mustang Mama, Upin & Ipin, etc. Malaysia is now known as a very attractive and stable economy for content development, as there’s an abundance of English-speaking creative multi-racial talent pool, aggressive government support, state-of-the-art studio infrastructures, as well as a relatively affordable venue for world-class studio operations.
The key strengths of the Malaysian film and animation studios would be its richness of its culture and heritage, as well as its strong resources. All these can provide the affluent material resources for developing the animation and TV/film industry. Additionally, with the highly talented workforce, strategic geographical location and economic stability, it allows the country to provide a unique position as being a multi-lingual, multi-cultural and rapidly growing market.
As we enter into the next phase of the exciting contents and application sector, the global market continues to grow from strength to strength. Since Malaysia’s inception of the Creative Multimedia Initiative in 2006 announced by the Prime Minister, “Creative Malaysia” has risen to be a prominent player in the world content market. According to The National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom India 2010), the global growth of the animation industry is projected to grow from US$ 25 billion to US$ 35 billion in the next three years. Malaysian Films in the past few years have also made vast developments and accomplishments within the digital content industry. Four years ago Malaysia had 68 cinemas and 287 screens and now Malaysia has 97 cinemas and 577 screens nationwide. Total box-office takings improved from RM 380.72 in 2008 to RM 518.16 in 2010. (FINAS, 2011) In line with the growth of cinemas and the drive by the Government has led to an increased in the demand of localised contents.
The Malaysian industry itself is estimated to be worth RM16 billion based on advertising, animation, digital content, TV/film, games, music and video. Last year, the Malaysian entertainment and media industry generated overall RM 9.4 billion revenue, employed more than 45,000 creative industry professionals and contributed 1.27% to the National GDP. (MSC Malaysia Creative Industry Baseline Study, figures include advertising, TV/film, radio, animation, games, music, interactive software, new media, etc.)