Key Trends from the 2005 country brief

• During 1981–2002, total agricultural researcher numbers in Malaysia rose steadily, and public agricultural R&D expenditures, in constant prices, almost tripled.
• Malaysia’s principal agricultural research agency, the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI), accounted for about one-third of the country’s agricultural research staff and a quarter of its agricultural R&D spending in 2002.
• In 2002, spending by Malaysia’s three major commodity boards—the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB), the Malaysian Rubber Board (MRB), and the Malaysian Cocoa Board (MCB)—constituted one-third of the country’s agricultural research expenditures.
• Despite rising private-sector agricultural R&D investments in absolute terms, the share of private-sector agricultural research has fallen in recent years given rapidly increasing investments by the government and higher-education agencies.
• Financing of Malaysian agricultural R&D has undergone significant reform in recent years through the Intensification for Research Priority Areas (IRPA) program, which has also encouraged cooperation between the country’s public and private R&D agencies.

Malaysia