Malaysia’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI) is eyeing to enhance the startup ecosystem, emerging technology, and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education under Budget 2024, national news agency Bernama reported.

Minister Chang Lih Kang said those are among the areas that have been proposed to be included in the budget, but he did not reveal any specific details as it is still under the purview of the Finance Ministry to be finalized.

“Basically, there are a few areas that we want to strengthen, with the first being the startup ecosystem, we hope we could have more funding,” he said.

“…and there are other areas such as emerging technology that we hope can help our country in developing a cutting-edge, state-of-the-art technology. Another big focus area is STEM education where we want to inculcate STEM education,” he was quoted as saying after officiating the Malaysian Technology Development Corporation (MTDC) Technology Conference and Exhibition on Tuesday.

Chang said he is also hopeful that the budget will include an allocation to ensure the government’s target to have a total of 1.5 million electric vehicles in the country by 2040 is feasible.

“Currently, it is still very low I don’t have a figure but towards the end of the year we will get the figure, but it’s low. Our target is by 2025 we can have 10,000 charging stations. So, judging from the number of charging stations, you know the adoption levels are very low,” he said, according to the report.

Malaysia’s Budget 2024 is expected to be tabled in Parliament on Oct 13.

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