Ports, Airports, Rail and Broadband by Malaysian Region — the Official Numbers

Malaysia has thirty-something commercial ports and two that matter for containers. It has six international airports and one that moves air freight at scale. Knowing which side of that line your location sits on is worth more than any list of amenities in a state brochure.

Every figure below comes from the Ministry of Transport’s own source files, MCMC’s quarterly statistics or the Energy Commission’s regulatory review. Where an official figure does not exist — and for the ECRL’s freight capacity it genuinely does not — that is stated rather than filled in.

Which ports actually move volume?

Container throughput, 2025, from the Ministry of Transport’s maritime statistics:

Port	2025 TEU	2024 TEU
Port Klang (Northport and Westports)	15,138,772	14,644,527
Tanjung Pelepas (Johor)	14,028,375	12,253,309
Penang	1,351,448	1,416,450
Johor Port (Pasir Gudang)	1,081,675	1,059,117
Sabah (all ports, aggregated)	533,332	501,944
Kuching	325,431	305,197
Bintulu	305,308	342,429
Kuantan	145,234	147,460
Malaysia	33,070,778	30,798,477

Two ports carry 88 per cent of the national box count. Everything else is an order of magnitude smaller, and the gap is widening — PTP grew 14.5 per cent in a year.

But size is not the same as usefulness to you. Transshipment was 21.90 million TEU, or 66.2 per cent of the 2025 national total. PTP is 95.3 per cent transshipment; Port Klang is 55.6 per cent. Most of that volume never enters or leaves Malaysia. What high transshipment buys a local exporter is real but indirect: more services, more direct calls, better frequency. It says nothing about the surrounding industrial base.

For bulk and project cargo the ranking changes completely. Cargo tonnage in thousands of freight weight tonnes, 2025: Port Klang 248,705 · PTP 153,992 · Bintulu 45,072 · Penang 30,724 · Johor Port 30,256 · Sabah 28,685 · Kuantan 21,339 · Port Dickson 15,130 · Kuching 10,451 · Kemaman 7,802.

Bintulu is third in the country by tonnage and eighth by containers, which is exactly what a liquefied natural gas and bulk port looks like. Its own annual report puts container capacity at 350,000 TEU a year — so it is close to full on the box side and will not absorb a container-heavy operation. Kemaman handles no containers at all in either year of the ministry’s table.

Capacity is being added where the volume already is: the Ministry of Transport’s own release records Westports’ CT10 to CT17 expansion doubling capacity from 14 million to 28 million TEU by 2028, with Carey Island targeting 30 million TEU by 2060.

Where can you fly freight from?

Air cargo, metric tonnes, 2024, from the Ministry of Transport’s yearbook — the only official source, since Malaysia Airports has published no traffic statistics since December 2024 and never published cargo tonnage by airport:

Airport	2024 tonnes
KLIA (Terminals 1 and 2)	809,333
Pulau Pinang	114,551
Kota Kinabalu	57,113
Kuching	53,534
Tawau	8,905
Johor Bahru (Senai)	6,742
Subang	5,994
Miri	4,736
Malaysia	1,073,082

KLIA is 75 per cent of national air freight. Penang, at 114,551 tonnes, is the only other airport with meaningful capability, and that is the electronics cluster showing up in the statistics — high-value, low-weight, time-sensitive freight is exactly what an E&E supply chain generates.

Senai deserves a specific warning. Johor Bahru moved 6,742 tonnes in 2024 — less than one per cent of KLIA. It is operated by Senai Airport Terminal Services, not by Malaysia Airports. A Johor operation that needs air freight is realistically trucking to KLIA or to Singapore Changi, and that should be in the model rather than assumed away.

What does the ECRL actually change, and when?

The East Coast Rail Link is 92.62 per cent complete as of February 2026, with track laid across all 519 km of the Kota Bharu to Gombak stretch. The staging matters more than the headline:

Section	Completion	Operations
Kota Bharu to Gombak	December 2026	January 2027
Gombak to Port Klang	December 2027	January 2028

Until January 2028 the line connects the east coast to the edge of the Klang Valley, not to a port. Any 2027 logistics case that assumes a through run to Port Klang is a year early.

The route runs 665 km across five states and one federal territory in three sections — Kota Bharu to Dungun, Dungun to Mentakab, Mentakab to Port Klang — with 20 stations, freight spurlines to Kertih, Kemaman and Kuantan Port, and dual-track branches from Jalan Kastam to Northport and Westports. Note the ministry’s own project page still says 640 km, the superseded alignment figure; that page also still lists LRT3’s opening as February 2024 and omits Gemas to Johor Bahru entirely. Where the ministry and the project company disagree here, the project company is current.

The land bridge is official policy, not a pitch. Kuantan Port Consortium, Northport and Malaysia Rail Link signed a memorandum of understanding on 19 August 2024, witnessed by the Transport Minister, to realise the East Coast Rail Link land bridge connecting Kuantan Port to Port Klang, with MRL’s chief executive quoted saying it would cut vessel travel time by up to 2.5 days by removing the run around Singapore.

Two things to hold steady against that. First, no official freight capacity figure exists — not in tonnes, not in TEU, not in train frequency. What is published is a 70 per cent freight to 30 per cent passenger capacity split and an 80 km/h freight design speed. The tonnage figures circulating online have no government source and should not be relied on. Second, the total cost is RM74.96 billion: RM50.27 billion of construction plus RM24.69 billion of development. Coverage quoting “RM50 billion” is quoting the construction component only.

Is rail freight a real option today?

More than most planning assumes. KTMB’s official figures, 2024: 6.0 million tonnes, 1,194 million tonne-kilometres and 540,446 TEU — up from 324,764 TEU in 2022.

By cargo type in 2024, in thousands of tonnes: maritime container 3,839 · cement and clinker 1,090 · landbridge 469 · processed food and drink 355 · chemicals 248.

Maritime containers are about 64 per cent of rail freight tonnage, which means rail is already functioning as port drayage rather than as a niche bulk mode. And KTMB already runs a cargo category called Landbridge — the Setia Jaya to Bang Sue service into Thailand — which has grown from 133,000 tonnes in 2015 to 469,000 in 2024, with tonne-kilometres nearly doubling in 2024 alone. The ECRL land bridge is an extension of something already measured, not a new concept.

Padang Besar, Butterworth, Northport and Pasir Gudang are served. There is no consolidated official statement of which ports have active rail sidings, and the current status at PTP and Westports could not be confirmed with either port authority — check the specific terminal before designing around it.

On the passenger side, the Gemas to Johor Bahru electrified double track — 195 km — is in commercial service: KTMB’s official timetable effective 18 April 2026 lists 22 ETS services calling between JB Sentral and Gemas.

Where is the connectivity?

MCMC’s Facts and Figures for the first quarter of 2026 gives both metrics by state. National 5G coverage is 82.4 per cent and 4G is 99.73 per cent.

State	5G coverage %	Fixed broadband per 100 premises
W.P. Kuala Lumpur	97.8	64.7 (all federal territories)
W.P. Putrajaya	97.3	—
Selangor	96.9	62.5
W.P. Labuan	95.4	—
Pulau Pinang	91.9	57.7
Perlis	91.4	25.2
Melaka	89.9	45.0
Johor	84.1	47.3
Perak	81.0	42.6
Kedah	80.2	36.1
Negeri Sembilan	77.8	46.1
Terengganu	73.2	32.1
Sabah	69.0	27.0
Kelantan	67.0	26.9
Pahang	66.4	29.2
Sarawak	63.8	40.2
Malaysia	82.4	49.0

Perlis is the instructive row: 91.4 per cent 5G coverage and the country’s worst fixed broadband at 25.2 per 100 premises. Mobile coverage and fixed infrastructure are not the same asset, and a business that needs symmetric, low-latency fixed capacity cannot substitute one for the other.

Two cautions on this table. MCMC labels the fixed figure per 100 premises, not per 100 households, and its own note says the count includes business and government subscriptions — so it is not a household penetration rate. And the 5G percentages are unchanged to one decimal place since the fourth quarter of 2025, which says the rollout has plateaued rather than that it is still climbing.

MCMC publishes no average or median broadband speed of its own — the speed figure quoted in its Internet Users Survey is Ookla data, footnoted as such — and no state-level internet penetration.

How reliable is industrial power?

From the Energy Commission’s inaugural Annual Regulatory Review, published April 2026, and TNB’s own annual report:

Region	SAIDI 2025, minutes per customer per year
Kuala Lumpur	20.28
Peninsular Malaysia	46.93 (2024: 47.88)
W.P. Labuan	82.16
Sabah	187.13 (2024: 203.65)

Sabah’s interruption minutes are four times the Peninsular figure. It is improving — down 16 minutes year on year — but a process that cannot tolerate outages needs to price standby generation there in a way it would not in Selangor. No state-level or regional SAIDI breakdown is published beyond these four figures, and TNB’s own report gives Sabah as both 187.13 and 186.00 in different sections.

Peninsular grid headroom, 2025: installed capacity 28,192 MW, peak demand 21,049 MW on 28 May 2025, reserve margin 25 per cent — down from 29 per cent in 2024. The capacity mix is coal 43.20 per cent, gas 41.16, hydro 7.98, solar 6.64 and mini-hydro 1.02. A falling reserve margin alongside data-centre load growth is the thing to watch if your project is power-hungry.

Common mistakes

Reading transshipment volume as economic activity. Two-thirds of Malaysia’s container throughput is boxes changing ships. PTP at 95.3 per cent transshipment tells you about shipping alliances, not about Johor’s industrial base.

Planning a 2027 ECRL logistics route to Port Klang. The western section does not operate until January 2028.

Publishing an ECRL freight tonnage. No official figure exists. The numbers in circulation are unsourced.

Assuming Senai can handle air freight. At 6,742 tonnes in 2024 it moves less than one per cent of KLIA’s volume, and it is not a Malaysia Airports facility.

Citing Penang Port’s own website. Its container services page still quotes “more than 1.5 million TEUs” for 2017. The ministry’s 2025 figure is 1,351,448 — Penang has gone backwards, and the operator’s page hides it.

Using Malaysia Airports for current traffic data. It stopped publishing after December 2024, and it never published cargo tonnage by airport in any case.

What’s next

Match the location to the mode. Containers out of Port Klang or PTP; bulk and gas out of Bintulu or Kemaman; air freight out of KLIA, with Penang as the only real alternative. Then check whether the workforce is there, in talent availability by region, and what the site will cost to run, in business costs by region. If a corridor incentive is part of the case, state investment agencies sets out who can actually grant one.