Counted per resident, Sarawak’s interior and Putrajaya get the most federal contract money; counted in total, Kuala Lumpur does

We read every federal tender and quotation award the Treasury published for January 2023 to September 2026 and placed each in the district where its title says the work is done: RM 49.4 billion of RM 86.9 billion in tenders could be placed. How a district ranks depends on how it is counted. In total, Kuala Lumpur leads with RM 3.7 billion in tenders, then Johor Bahru and Petaling. Per resident, Belaga (RM 3,018 a year), Putrajaya (RM 2,992) and Julau lead, and Selangor trails every state at RM 185 against RM 387 nationally. Per km², Putrajaya and Kuala Lumpur lead.

Built from public data only: the Treasury’s MyProcurement award results, DOSM population and land area, DOSM’s 2024 household income survey and the cabinets as Wikipedia lists them. The data is correct as of the study date, 15 October 2026, revised 16 October 2026; the study is not refreshed after it. Money is placed where the work is done, never where the ministry or the contractor sits.

Count Per residentIn totalPer km²

Show TendersQuotations

Mark One contract is over half

Figure 1. Malaysia’s 160 districts shaded by the federal tender (or quotation) money placed in them, January 2023 to September 2026, counted per resident a year, in total or per km² of land a year: the darker, the more; each count’s five shades split the districts into fifths. Sabah, Sarawak and Labuan are drawn 5° of longitude west of their true position, closer to the Peninsula. A ringed dot marks a district where one contract is more than half of its money. Pick a district for its figures, or tap a name such as Kapit to fly there.

How a district ranks depends on how it is counted.
In total, the big cities lead: Kuala Lumpur, Johor Bahru, Petaling. Per resident, small districts lead, because a few contracts go a long way among few people. Per km², the dense ones lead. No count is neutral; How we count shows how much of the per-resident spread is chance.
Belaga, Putrajaya and Julau receive the most tender money per resident; nine of the next eleven districts are also in Sarawak.Belaga Julau Putrajaya
Belaga RM 3,018 a year, Putrajaya RM 2,992, Julau RM 2,949, Kapit RM 2,053. Most of the interior’s money is Education’s: RM 1,251 per resident a year in Belaga, RM 1,788 in Julau and RM 1,175 in Kapit (Ministries).
Rural districts receive more tender money per resident than towns and cities: RM 540 a year against RM 343.
With districts grouped by density, rural ones (under 150 residents per km²) lead suburban (RM 331) and urban (RM 343) ones. Quotations are level: RM 91 to 94 in every group.
Selangor receives the least per resident of any state, for tenders and for quotations.Petaling Ulu Langat
RM 185 a year in tenders and RM 63 in quotations, against RM 387 and RM 93 nationally. Johor (RM 287) and Kedah (RM 297) are next lowest for tenders.
Education and Health hold 54% of the money; services are half of it, and works the easiest to place.
Of RM 103.6 billion in tenders and quotations, Education’s is RM 33.4 billion and Health’s RM 22.4 billion. By category, services are RM 52.6 billion; 95% of works money can be placed in a district, against 37% of supplies (Categories, Ministries).
A ministry does not, on the whole, place more of its money in its own minister’s seat.
Across 169 terms of ministers and deputy ministers since 2021, the holder’s seat ranked at the 50th percentile on average, as chance would have it; an extra fair share for each seat would have put it at the 87th. A few seats stand out (Ministers’ seats).
KL and Selangor firms win 78% of the tender money placed in Putrajaya and half or more in Negeri Sembilan.Seremban
In Sarawak (76%) and Sabah (63%) home firms win most of it; in Putrajaya, 7%.
57% of tender money can be placed in a district; the rest is state-wide, national or unstated.
A fifth of it is national or covers several states (a ministry’s systems, a regional supply), a tenth names only a state and a tenth names no place. For quotations, 71% can be placed.

Putrajaya and Labuan lead by state; Selangor, Johor and Kedah trail

Per resident a year in tenders, Putrajaya (RM 2,992) and Labuan (RM 1,135) come first, then Terengganu (RM 672), Sarawak (RM 650) and Perlis (RM 644). The two most populous states receive the least: Selangor RM 185 and Johor RM 287, then Kedah RM 297 (Figure 2). Quotations put Putrajaya and Labuan first and Selangor last, at about a quarter of the level.

Figure 2. Tender and quotation money placed in a district, per resident a year, by state, the highest tender figure first. The ink tick is the national figure.

Every district, three ways

The table follows the map’s switches: tenders or quotations, ranked per resident, in total or per km². A figure marked “one contract” rests mostly on a single award.

Table 1. Districts by federal contract money placed in them, January 2023 to September 2026: per resident a year, in total and per km² of land a year, with their awards, residents (DOSM, 2024) and density class. Tap a name to fly to it.

Poorer districts receive no less, and for tenders somewhat more

We split the 159 districts with an income figure into fifths by median household income. The poorest fifth, with 1.8 million residents, received RM 534 per resident a year in tenders; the richest, with 17.9 million, RM 337 (Figure 3). District by district the link is weak (Spearman’s rank correlation −0.150 for tenders, 0.081 for quotations).

Figure 3. Tender and quotation money placed in a district per resident a year, by the district’s median monthly household income in national fifths of districts (DOSM, 2024). The ink tick is the national figure.

Where the winning firms are based

From each winner’s published address we read the state the firm is based in, for 96% of the placed tender lines. Firms from Kuala Lumpur and Selangor win 78% of the money placed in Putrajaya and 53% in Negeri Sembilan. Sarawak (76%) and Sabah (63%) keep the largest home shares; Putrajaya (7%) the smallest (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Tender money placed in each state, by where the winning firm is based: the same state, Kuala Lumpur or Selangor, or elsewhere. For Selangor and Kuala Lumpur the home share is the two together.

How much of the money can be placed

Of RM 86.9 billion in tenders, RM 49.4 billion (57%) names a place we could pin to a district. A fifth is national or covers several states, a tenth names only a state and a tenth names no place at all. Quotations are smaller and more local: RM 11.8 billion of RM 16.8 billion (71%) is placed. State-wide and national money is reported beside the district figures, never spread over them (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Federal tender and quotation money awarded January 2023 to September 2026, by how precisely its title places it.

What we would test next

Add the states’ own tenders: this study counts federal awards only, and state and local-council spending follows other rules.
Weigh works by need: road kilometres, school and clinic counts per district would show whether the interior’s high figures close a gap or keep pace.
Follow the money over time: the daily crawler keeps adding awards, so each year can be compared once 2026 is complete.

Limits

A contract is placed by its title. A title can name a place the work only passes through, or an office far from where the goods are used; a road is placed at the place it names.
An award’s value is the accepted price, not what was finally paid; variations and cancellations are not published.
The archive is thin before 2021 and some results are published years late, so the last months may still fill in.
17 tender and about 3,000 quotation awards could not be read from the Treasury site; they are not counted.
A district with few residents and one large contract can top the per-resident table on that contract alone.
Lubok Antu has no published income figure; it is left out of the income fifths.

Data and method

Study date: 15 October 2026, revised 16 October 2026. Every figure, map and table is correct as of that date; the study is not refreshed as new awards are published.
Correction, 16 October 2026: titles that name several states (“Zon Utara: Perak, Perlis, Kedah, Pulau Pinang”) had been placed in Perlis, the one state that is also a district, and in Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya or Labuan when those were named alongside another state. They now count as covering several states. Perlis fell from RM 1,124 to RM 644 per resident a year in tenders, Putrajaya from RM 3,236 to RM 2,992.
Correction, 16 October 2026: the archive publishes some results again under a new record, with the winner’s name corrected or changed, the reference in another format, or each member of a design-and-build team listed at the full contract price. Each copy had been counted. A line now counts once when another record, published earlier, has the same title, category, place, price to the ringgit and acceptance date: RM 0.5 billion in the window. Belaga fell from RM 3,124 to RM 3,018 per resident a year in tenders, and the total from RM 104.1 to RM 103.6 billion; no ranking at the top changed.
Awards: the Treasury’s MyProcurement results archive (myprocurement.treasury.gov.my), federal tender and quotation results, crawled 14–15 October 2026: 24,384 tender awards (RM 141.8 billion) and 127,371 quotation awards (RM 25.5 billion) published since January 2020. Each carries its ministry, agency, category, title, winners and accepted price.
Window: 1 January 2023 to 30 September 2026, 3.75 years (the ministers page runs from January 2021). An award is dated by its letter of acceptance (99% of awards in the window), else its decision date, else the date it was published.
Placing an award, in order: a DOSM district name in the title; else a named facility or locality (Overture Maps places and localities, 2026-09) found inside one district; else an AI reading of the title, which must answer with one of DOSM’s 160 districts or “state only”, “national” or “unknown”. 20,158 titles were read by OpenAI gpt-4.1 (14 October 2026) and about 43,000 by Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5 (15 October 2026); about 80 titles had no usable answer and count as unknown.
Residents: DOSM district population, 2024. Land: each district’s area from DOSM’s outlines, on the ellipsoid. Density classes follow DOSM’s district lookup: urban 1,000 residents per km² or more, suburban 150 to 1,000, rural under 150; the federal territories are urban. Income: DOSM Household Income Survey 2024, median monthly gross household income by district; Perlis, Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Labuan take their state figure.
Per resident a year: money placed in the district over the window, divided by its 2024 residents and by 3.75. Per km² a year: the same money divided by the land area. State figures add up their districts.
Winning firms: the state in each winner’s published address, matched for 96% of placed tender lines; shares are of money, not of awards. The study shows no company names.