Malaysia's single biggest export category is machinery and transport equipment, and for a while in the 2000s its grip on the country's exports slipped year after year, from nearly two thirds in 2000 to well under half by the early 2010s, while petroleum and agricultural commodities took up the room. That has now reversed. In 2025, machinery and transport equipment was back to just over half of everything Malaysia sold abroad, the highest share since 2006.
We counted the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) external trade series, published on data.gov.my, which breaks exports down by SITC section. Section 7, "machinery and transport equipment", is the category that holds Malaysia's electrical and electronic goods: computers, semiconductors, telecommunications equipment and electrical machinery, alongside transport equipment such as vehicles, aircraft and ships. We added up the monthly export values for each full calendar year from 2000 to 2025 and divided section 7 by total exports.
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The finding, in one line
Section 7's share of Malaysia's exports was 62.5 per cent in 2000. It fell to a low of 38.0 per cent in 2012 and 2013. By 2025 it had climbed back to 50.3 per cent, the first year above half since 2006 (52.5 per cent).
What happened in between
In the 2000s, section 7's fall was not because its exports shrank. In current ringgit they rose, from RM233.4 billion in 2000 to RM266.7 billion in 2012, up about 14 per cent. Its share fell because everything else grew faster. Total exports nearly doubled over those years, from RM373.3 billion to RM702.6 billion, and nearly half of that increase was commodities: of the roughly RM329 billion added to total exports between 2000 and 2012, mineral fuels and oils and fats together made up about RM158 billion, or 48 per cent, while section 7 contributed only about RM33 billion, around 10 per cent. Mineral fuels (crude oil, petroleum products and liquefied natural gas) rose from 9.6 per cent of exports in 2000 to a peak of 22.3 per cent in 2013. Animal and vegetable oils, fats and waxes rose from 3.5 per cent to a peak of 10.5 per cent in 2011. As those shares rose, and because all the shares must add up to 100 per cent, section 7's share fell.
The recovery since then is the mirror image. From the 2012 low, section 7 exports roughly tripled, from RM266.7 billion to RM808.1 billion in 2025, and this time section 7 led the growth: of the roughly RM904 billion added to total exports between 2012 and 2025, section 7 made up about RM541 billion, or 60 per cent, while mineral fuels and oils and fats together added just about RM61 billion, under 7 per cent. Mineral fuels fell back to 11.2 per cent of exports in 2025 and oils and fats to 5.5 per cent, roughly where they had been two decades earlier.
The full series
Here are the shares of total exports for the three categories, for selected full calendar years. All figures are our own count of the DOSM SITC series.
| Year | Machinery & transport (section 7) | Mineral fuels | Oils & fats (section 4) | Total exports (RM bil) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 62.5% | 9.6% | 3.5% | 373.3 |
| 2005 | 54.0% | 13.4% | 4.6% | 536.2 |
| 2008 | 43.2% | 18.3% | 8.6% | 663.0 |
| 2012 | 38.0% | 20.4% | 9.0% | 702.6 |
| 2015 | 41.9% | 16.2% | 6.2% | 777.4 |
| 2020 | 45.2% | 11.4% | 5.6% | 983.8 |
| 2023 | 45.6% | 16.5% | 5.3% | 1,426.2 |
| 2024 | 45.7% | 14.4% | 5.5% | 1,507.7 |
| 2025 | 50.3% | 11.2% | 5.5% | 1,606.5 |
What sits inside section 7
Section 7, "machinery and transport equipment", groups electrical and electronic (E&E) goods together with transport equipment and non-electronic machinery, and the SITC section-level data does not split them apart, so this piece measures the whole section rather than electronics on their own. DOSM does publish a separate E&E figure in its monthly trade releases, on its own definition: in September 2025 E&E was 47.0 per cent of all Malaysian exports. We report that as a separate DOSM measure and do not combine it with our section 7 series or use it to estimate how much of section 7 is electronics, because the two are defined differently and cover different periods.
What this does and does not show
These are export values in current ringgit and are not adjusted for inflation. We report shares of total exports rather than ringgit amounts, but different export categories can have different price and exchange-rate trends, so the shares should be read as shares of nominal trade, not as a volume or real-terms measure. Our yearly figures are our own sum of DOSM's monthly trade_sitc_1d file and can differ by a fraction of a per cent from DOSM's separately published annual totals, which are revised after the fact; we use one consistent counting method for every year. International trade classifications have been revised over this quarter-century, and we have not reconstructed the SITC section boundaries across those revisions, so a reader should treat the broad shape of the twenty-five-year trend as the robust finding, rather than any single year-to-year move. We used full calendar years only, so the figures are not affected by the unusually high monthly export values recorded from April 2026 onwards, which fall outside this comparison.
Anyone can reproduce the count. Download the trade_sitc_1d data from data.gov.my, keep the full years 2000 to 2025, and for each year divide the summed exports of section 7 by the summed total exports.
