Medical Tourism Sector Continues To See Growing Demand - Amir Hamzah

GEORGE TOWN, May 18 (Bernama) -- Malaysia continues to strengthen its position as a competitive medical tourism destination, supported by growing demand from foreign patients seeking quality and reasonably priced healthcare services.

Finance Minister II Datuk Seri Amir Hamzah Azizan said private hospitals in Penang, Johor and the Klang Valley continued to attract foreign patients, reflecting Malaysia’s strong value proposition in the healthcare sector.

“Medical tourism is still strong. If you come to Island Hospital in Penang, quite a lot of its patients are actually from overseas because Malaysia still provides reasonable and very good healthcare.

“If you go to hospitals in Johor and the Klang Valley, you will also see growing demand from foreign tourists coming in for medical services. This is a growing space that we should continue to support,” he told reporters after visiting Intel here, today.

He said this was despite the implementation of the six per cent sales and service tax (SST) on private healthcare services, adding that the government had provided exemptions where necessary to ensure the tax measure would not unduly burden the population.

Amir Hamzah added that the SST was introduced to strengthen the government’s revenue base and improve the country’s fiscal space.

On collections from the healthcare SST, he said the revenue was channelled into the Consolidated Fund to support the government’s overall fiscal expenditure.

“The collections that we get from SST are put in the Consolidated Fund, so we use it to support the fiscal spending of the government.

“We have only made a few exemptions in areas where there is a purposeful separation, such as the sugar tax, which was increased last year and used to intervene in diseases related to diabetes, kidneys and so on,” he said.

-- BERNAMA