Minister Ong Ka Chuan has lauded the clearing of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak by the attorney-general (AG) over his said RM2.6 billion donation as a boost to the nation's trade this year.

"(AG Mohamed Apandi Ali's) move will help to certain extent, but I hope this thing should improve further.

"(Previously) because all the doubt (and) uncertainty affected investors' confidence...(which means) they would not invest.

“This is a confidence (in the country) we need to bring back," the second international trade and industry minister told reporters after announcing Malaysia's trade performance in 2015.

Ong, who is MCA secretary-general, was responding to a question whether the clearing of Najib over the ‘donation-gate’ scandal would improve the nation’s trade.

However Bloomberg today reported foreign analysts saying ongoing probes in Switzerland and Singapore into the 1MDB scandal continue to erode investor confidence in Malaysia.

Apandi last month cleared Najib of any wrongdoing in the RM2.6 billion donation affair and the SRC International case.

The top prosecutor also said that Najib had returned RM2.03 billion of the RM2.6 billion to its original donor who were the Saudi Arabian royal family.

Earlier, Ong said Malaysia's trade contracted 2.8 percent during the first half of 2015 before bouncing back 5.1 percent in the second half to reach a total of RM1.466 trillion.

The contraction, he said, was due to global economic factors and the domestic political situation.

"There were a lot of contributing factors such as the world economy, China's economic slow down and the oil price slide.

"The (uncertainty) of the local political situation also made people very confused and uncertain. Luckily, in the second half, we improved," Ong said.

He said that that Malaysia's total trade for 2015 grew by 1.2 percent to reach RM1.466 trillion compared to RM1.448 trillion in 2014.

Trade suplus again

Though the prices of major commodities such as palm oil, crude oil and rubber continued to slump, this was cushioned by manufactured goods the output of which which grew by 6.5 percent.

This in turn made Malaysia's export grow by 1.9 percent in 2015 to RM779.95 billion.

At the same time, Malaysia imports marginally increased 0.4% to RM685.65 billion.

As such, Malaysia again enjoyed a trade surplus of RM94.29 billion, its 18th consecutive year in recording a trade surplus, he noted.