Malaysia's State and Corridor Investment Agencies — What Each One Can Actually Approve

The agency everyone tells you to call first usually cannot approve the thing you need. That is not a criticism of the agencies — it is how the architecture is built. Malaysia’s investment approvals are federal. The states promote, facilitate, and hold exactly one card.

Knowing which card, and who holds it, saves months.

What can a state investment agency actually approve?

One document, in practice: the No Objection Letter.

InvestPenang states it plainly — the NOL is a mandatory document to obtain from InvestPenang before the Manufacturing License can be awarded by MITI/MIDA. Invest Selangor puts it the same way: MITI or MIDA requires the applicant to obtain a No Objection Letter from the Selangor State Government before the manufacturing licence can be granted.

So the sequence is not what most guides show. You do not get a state blessing and then apply federally. You apply to MIDA, receive a Letter of Manufacturing Licence Approval, and then go to the state for the NOL that unlocks it. Invest Selangor’s eligibility line is explicit: applicants are companies that have already received the MITI or MIDA approval letter, including an interim letter.

Everything else a state agency offers — site selection, utility introductions, talent programmes, aftercare — is facilitation. Valuable, unpriced, and not an approval.

Which agencies are real, and where do they publish?

Every domain below was tested directly in July 2026.

Agency	Legal form	Official domain	Gating document
InvestPenang (Invest-in-Penang Berhad)	Non-profit entity of the Penang State Government, established 5 November 2004	investpenang.gov.my	NOL, via enol.investpenang.gov.my
Invest Selangor Berhad	Company	investselangor.my	NOL
Invest Johor	Johor state investment promotion agency	investjohor.gov.my	NOL
Invest Melaka Berhad	Company	investmelaka.gov.my	NOL
InvestPerak (Perak Investment Management Centre)	Established 24 January 2006, reports to the Chief Minister of Perak	investperak.gov.my	NOL
Invest Sabah Berhad	Company	investsabah.gov.my	not published
InvestSarawak	Sarawak state investment agency	investsarawak.gov.my	not published
InvestKL	Absorbed by MIDA, 15 March 2026	no longer resolves	—

And the statutory corridor authorities, which are a different species — bodies corporate created by their own legislation:

Authority	Statute	Region	Official domain
NCIA	Act 687 (2008)	Northern Corridor Economic Region	ncer.com.my
ECERDC	Act 688 (2008)	Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, and Mersing and Segamat in Johor	ecerdc.com.my
IRDA	Act 664 (2007)	Iskandar Malaysia	irda.com.my
SEDIA	Sabah Economic Development and Investment Authority Enactment 2009	Sabah Development Corridor	sedia.com.my
RECODA	Sarawak ordinance, current-series Cap. 64	SCORE	recoda.gov.my

Why can none of them grant you an incentive?

Because their own statutes say so, in terms.

The SEDIA enactment s.7 lists the Authority’s functions. Paragraph (f) is to recommend to the Government or the Federal Government incentives for the Sabah Development Corridor. Paragraph (c) is to coordinate the expeditious implementation of all projects in the Sabah Development Corridor by performing the functions of one-stop centre. Recommend and coordinate. Neither is grant. The Chairman is the Chief Minister (s.8(1)(a)), which tells you the body is a political coordinating mechanism, not a revenue authority.

NCIA describes itself identically — it can recommend to the relevant Government Entities on the incentives to be given to investors in NCER.

RECODA has no taxing power at all under ss.9–10 of its ordinance.

IRDA is co-chaired by the Prime Minister and the Menteri Besar of Johor, and calls itself the main coordinating agency between public and private stakeholders. Coordinating, again.

The actual grant is a federal act: an exemption under the Income Tax Act 1967, made by the Minister of Finance, on the recommendation of the National Committee on Investment. Most guides describe the corridors as if they hand out tax holidays. They hand out letters of support.

Which states are actually winning investment?

There is exactly one official, comparable, by-state series: Appendix 2 of MIDA’s Malaysia Investment Performance Report, Approved Investments in Various Economic Sectors by State. Approved investment, RM million:

State	2025	2024
Johor	110,031.1	47,846.1
Selangor	83,916.4	101,790.6
W.P. Kuala Lumpur	63,262.7	89,209.6
Pulau Pinang	32,877.6	31,986.9
Kedah	27,791.2	47,985.3
Negeri Sembilan	19,129.6	7,248.9
Perak	15,755.3	8,758.6
Melaka	14,685.1	8,263.8
Sabah	14,550.0	6,457.8
Sarawak	14,193.6	16,235.5
Pahang	8,110.7	4,584.4
Terengganu	7,580.7	617.0
Kelantan	1,643.8	2,157.7
W.P. Putrajaya	863.0	1,258.7
W.P. Labuan	472.0	373.9
Perlis	217.2	126.8
Undecided	11,656.9	9,478.5
Malaysia	426,736.8	384,380.1

Johor more than doubled and took the national lead, at roughly 26 per cent of approved investment. Selangor and Kuala Lumpur both fell in absolute terms, and Kedah fell by 42 per cent. That is the JS-SEZ and the data-centre wave showing up in the only place it can be checked.

Four cautions before you use this table.

MIDA publishes no by-state breakdown for services or primary sectors — only all-sectors, in Appendix 2, and manufacturing-only, in Appendix 10. Subtracting one from the other gives you a residual you calculated, not a MIDA figure.

MIDA does not state rank in words. The ordering above follows the appendix’s own row order; the ranking is inferred from it.

Never blend these with a state agency’s own numbers. InvestPenang, Invest Selangor, Invest Sabah and the rest publish on a different basis, often including state-level memoranda and projects MIDA never approved. Putting the two in one table would be actively misleading. If you cite a state agency figure, label the basis.

The totals are revised, repeatedly. The 2024 national figure was RM378,499.7 million in the 2024 report and RM384,380.1 million in the 2025 report’s comparative column, with individual state rows unchanged. And MIDA’s own revised quarterly table published in June 2026 puts 2025 at RM431,080.6 million, with Johor at RM110,050.6 million and Selangor at RM84,625.0 million — against the RM426,736.8 million headline used above. Pick one vintage and cite it consistently; do not mix them in a single calculation. The 2025 column above sums to RM426,736.9 million against a stated RM426,736.8 million, the 0.1 rounding difference the report itself warns about; the 2024 column sums exactly.

Manufacturing alone tells a different story. On MIDA’s manufacturing-only table for 2025, Johor takes RM24,577.1 million across 323 projects, Pulau Pinang RM22,375.4 million across 232 and Selangor RM18,137.3 million across 411. Penang is a close second in factories while placing fourth on all sectors — which is exactly what you would expect of a state whose economy is 47 per cent manufacturing. If your project is a plant rather than a data centre, the all-sectors league table is the wrong one to read.

What changed in 2025 and 2026?

Three things, and all three break older guidance.

NCER’s tax incentive package closed. NCIA’s own page states that the NTAX package will no longer be available for application, effective 1st January 2025, and that new incentives run through the National Committee on Investment instead. The historic rates it describes — 100% income tax exemption up to 15 years in zone N1 covering Kedah and Perlis, 70% up to 10 years in zone N2 covering Penang and Perak, cited to s.127(3A) of the Income Tax Act 1967 — are a record of what was available, not a menu.

ECER’s incentive orders lapsed. The 2016 ECER orders were extended only to 31 December 2024 by P.U.(A) 344–350/2023, and no later extension has been located in the gazette.

InvestKL ceased to exist as an agency. MIDA’s media release states that from 15 March 2026 it assumes InvestKL’s investment promotion and facilitation functions, that InvestKL ceases independent operations on absorption, and that the move eliminates institutional overlap.

Taken together: the corridor-incentive era that ran from 2007 has largely wound down into a single federal channel.

The exception that proves the point is JS-SEZ, which is the one corridor still expanding — MIDA records RM77.0 billion of approved investment across 393 projects and 18,406 employment opportunities in 2025, with a headline 5 per cent corporate rate for up to 15 years and 15 per cent personal tax for eligible knowledge workers for up to 10. But no rate order has been gazetted. A sweep of subsidiary legislation returns nothing for special economic zone, global services or ekonomi khas, and the guidelines for JS-SEZ, the National Global Services Hub and the New Investment Incentive Framework all say the rate is to be provided through subsidiary legislation under s.65B. These are administrative approvals with no claimable instrument behind them yet — worth knowing before a financial model treats the 5 per cent as a legal entitlement.

Which domains do not resolve?

This matters more than it sounds, because the wrong domain is how readers end up on a squatted or impersonating site.

• investkl.gov.my — no longer resolves, consistent with the MIDA absorption.
• ncia.gov.my — does not exist. NCIA publishes at ncer.com.my.
• recoda.com.my — does not resolve. RECODA is at recoda.gov.my.
• ecerdc.com.my — resolves only on the www host.
• investkedah.com.my — resolves, but redirects to an unrelated commercial site. Do not treat it as a Kedah government channel.
• sedia.com.my — live, but returns 403 to automated fetches; it serves normally to a browser.

Common mistakes

Treating the corridor authority as the decision-maker. It is a coordinating body with a recommending power. Budgeting a project on a corridor rate you have not traced to a gazetted order is how a financial model acquires a number that no one will honour.

Applying for the NOL before the MIDA approval letter. Invest Selangor’s own eligibility criterion is that you already hold the MITI or MIDA approval, interim letters included. Turning up early wastes a cycle.

Sending Forms 9, 24 and 49. Invest Selangor’s published NOL document list still asks for them. Those forms were abolished by the Companies Act 2016 — the current equivalents are the s.17 notice of registration, the s.78 return of allotment and the s.58 particulars of officers. Send the modern documents and a covering note; do not conclude the state cannot process your file.

Assuming every state has an agency. Six states have no separately branded investment agency whose domain could be verified. In those states the function typically sits with the state economic planning unit or the state development corporation. A consultant page listing sixteen tidy agency names is describing an org chart that does not exist.

Confusing the state agency with the corridor authority in Sabah and Sarawak. Both run in parallel: Invest Sabah Berhad alongside SEDIA, InvestSarawak alongside RECODA. They are not the same body and they do not have the same mandate.

What’s next

Work out which of the two tracks you are on. If you need a manufacturing licence, your critical path runs MIDA first, state agency second, and the NOL is the item to chase. If you are a services or digital business, the state agency is a courtesy call and MIDA or MDEC is the real counterparty.

Then price the location on things that are actually published — statutory employer costs, electricity, water, and port access — rather than on an incentive rate. Our companion pages on business costs by region, talent availability by region and infrastructure and connectivity by region set out what can be sourced officially, and say plainly where nothing can.