Women's sports programmes are set to see a marked increase in funding next year as part of the Youth and Sports Ministry’s 'Women 2020' initiative, minister Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman said today.

"We are going on a very ambitious plan to ensure that we increase, to an exponential extent, sports funding for women's football, futsal, netball, rugby and many others.

"We will work very closely with the Education Ministry to ensure that sports education in schools, particularly, will also largely help women to a great extent (so that) they play a lot more (sports).

"In the end, we can come up with more women athletes in the whole sports ecosystem," he told the press after officiating the Malaysian Youth Council (MYC) annual conference in Cheras.