Export-led Investments; Beneficial?

On the contrary; he's running because of knobheads like you

I found this interesting piece on my new favorite website on how Export-led Investments not only seems to raise living standards in any developing country but also upgrades export quality. Another outcome found by the paper was that there was a positive correlation between FDI and higher unit value of exports. Based on what I read from the paper, Export-led Investments carries the following plus points;

1. Boost exports of mediums killed sectors in developing countries. Apparently the bulk of investments done by companies are more than just low skilled manunfacturing, but more skewed towards medium skilled products (automotive parts, electronics and electricals etc). These form of investments are 14 times higher than low skilled manufacturing.
2. Results in upgrading within the sectors. Done through MNC's superiority - resulting in higher unit values of exports, where local companies can also learn from their operations. Productivity spillovers results in the abundance of higher quality inputs therefore benefiting indigenous producers of final goods.

However, export complexity / structure remains unchanged, and there are tendencies where FDI brought into more advanced / developed countries carries minimal impact on export quality. Now my problem is not that I don't believe this - I just still dont think that export-led investments are the way to go for any developing country wishing to catapult itself into a high-income nation, for instance, Malaysia.

Electrical & Electronics components plays a significant role in the country's exports - and although the foreign companies in Malaysia only amounts to half of the total players, they control over 90% of the exports. As a result, local indigenous players are being squeezed out. They can learn from the MNCs but they will never be as good as them as the MNCs will keep some of the secrets to themselves too. What Malaysia fails to see is in the long term - is that it doesnt help elevating Malaysia to high income status. To me, the matter of repatriation of profit done by these foreign MNCs would also result in a loss from Malaysia; we're pretty much being 'used' by these capitalistic people.

Now I can understand the nature; actually its beneficial to both sides but we could do better by actually learning from them rather than letting them use Malaysia as a temporary base for their operations. Without a strong global domestic company like we see in Korea and Japan, we will never be able to advance to a more developed economy. The key is specialization, protectionism and differentiation from our other Asian counterparts, not by blindly attracting FDI for short to mid term gains and attempting to go all rounder when developing our industrial base; there are no "jack of all trade" millionaires.

So its about damn time we wake up.