Competitiveness of Malaysia's fruits in the global market: Revealed comparative advantage analysis

Malaysia practices an open market system and is a proponent of free trade. its openness in embracing trade liberalization is evidenced by the signing of bilateral,regional and multilateral trade agreements. being a signatory to various free trade agreements,malaysia has been offered the opportunity to market its agricultural produce including tropical fruits,globally. tropical fruits are considered exotic and have been found to offer health benefits. as such,demand for tropical fruits globally is increasing but the pool of players supplying these fruits is relatively small. hence,the purpose of this paper was to assess the competitive position of malaysiaś selected tropical fruits in comparison to five major tropical fruit exporters. three of these exporters are from asean,namely indonesia,philippines and thailand,and two are from asia,i.e.,china and india. the findings of this study demonstrate that malaysia has a competitive edge in selected fruit types. in order to sustain its competitive position in the watermelon market,malaysia should venture into downstream processing so as to add value,instead of focusing solely on marketing a whole fruit or minimally processed fruit.