Brief Introduction Capital: Kuala Lumpur Area: total: 330000 sq km The important Festival: National day: August 31 Population: 25,000,000 Language:Bahasa Melayu (official), English, Chinese dialects (Cantonese, Mandarin, Hokkien, Hakka, Hainan, Foochow), Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Panjabi, Thai; note - in addition, in East Malaysia several indigenous languages are spoken, the largest are Iban and Kadazan . Currency: MYR

Malaysia

Geography

Southeastern Asia, peninsula and northern one-third of the island of Borneo, bordering Indonesia and the South China Sea, south of Vietnam.

Administrative divisions

13 states (negeri-negeri, singular - negeri) and 3 federal territories* (wilayah-wilayah persekutuan, singular - wilayah persekutuan); Johor, Kedah, Kelantan, Labuan*, Melaka, Negeri Sembilan, Pahang, Perak, Perlis, Pulau Pinang, Putrajaya, Sabah, Sarawak, Selangor, Terengganu, Wilayah Persekutuan.

Economy – overview

Malaysia, a middle-income country, transformed itself from 1971 through the late 1990s from a producer of raw materials into an emerging multi-sector economy. Growth was almost exclusively driven by exports - particularly of electronics - and, as a result Malaysia was hard hit by the global economic downturn and the slump in the Information Technology (IT) sector in 2001. Healthy foreign exchange reserves and relatively small external debt make it unlikely that Malaysia will experience a crisis similar to the one in 1997, but the economy remains vulnerable to a more protracted slowdown in Japan and the US, top export destinations and key sources of foreign investment.

Culture and media

Newspaper:

Berita Harian / Berita Minggu , Business Times , Guāng Huá Rìbào [Kwong Wah Yit Poh] , Harakah Daily , Harian Metro, Huáqiáo Rìbào / Overseas Chinese Daily News , Malaysian Today.