KUALA LUMPUR (June 24): Malaysia is among economies in Asia likely to see better-than-expected expansion from strong growth of technology shipments this year, S&P Global Ratings said.

Surging demand related to artificial intelligence (AI) is fuelling an Asian tech export boom, providing a major boost to growth in Taiwan, South Korea and Vietnam, the rating agency said in a report. The lift is also significant in Singapore, China, Malaysia, Thailand and Japan.

"In most of the economies where the importance of tech manufacturing is relatively high, the favourable impact of the AI-related tech export boom outweighs that of the unfavorable energy shock," said Louis Kuijs, the Asia-Pacific chief economist of S&P Global Ratings.

That contrasts with India, Japan, New Zealand, and the Philippines, where the impact of the energy stress dominates, he said.

The US and Iran signed a 14-point interim agreement last week, extending a fragile ceasefire announced in April by another 60 days to negotiate a final truce to the war that broke out at the end of February.

Despite strains from the Iran war and closure of the Strait of Hormuz trade route, economic growth in the Asia-Pacific region largely held up in the first quarter of 2026. For Malaysia, latest data showed exports soaring 37% in April and 45% in May from their corresponding months in 2025.

“We expect tech shipments to continue to grow strongly in 2026”, though for products such as memory chips, an increasing portion of the growth stems from price increases rather than volume expansion, S&P Global Ratings said.

In April, overall export prices in dollar terms rose 31.6% year-on-year in South Korea and 17.4% in Taiwan, implying large terms-of-trade gains, even amid a price surge in energy imports, the agency noted.