Malaysia Property Market News

Malaysia´s economy likely to grow in January-March 2020

5 December, PUTRAJAYA – The Malaysian economy is expected to grow from January to March 2020 based on the September 2019 Leading Index which indicates that the country is in a recovery phase, said Chief Statistician Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin.

He said the Leading Index is a yardstick to measure the expected course of the overall economic movements in the future, which is capable of predicting the direction of the economy in the next four to six months.

The Leading Index was visualised through the Malaysia Business Cycle Clock (MBCC) — a new innovation by the Department of Statistics to provide consumers with a clearer and more friendly understanding of the economic cycle visually than time series data, he added

The MBCC is a cycle visualisation divided into four quadrants, namely expansion, slowdown, recession and recovery, he said at the launch of the Malaysian Import-Export Statistics by States and the MBCC here today.

Mohd Uzir said the MBCC also visualised the Coincident Index, which is used as a comprehensive measure of the current state of the economy, as well as the trend of the monthly Gross Domestic Product.

“The September 2019 Coincident Index is in a slowdown phase, which is indicative of a slowing economy in September 2019,” he said.

Mohd Uzir said the development of the MBCC put Malaysia on par with the initiative of the National Statistical Office, which was only released in some developed countries such as the Netherlands, South Korea and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Besides, he said based on Malaysia’s Import-Export Statistics by States, four states that dominated exports for the January-September period this year were Penang (28.4 per cent), Johor (20.2 per cent), Selangor (19.8 per cent), and Sarawak (8.3 per cent).

For imports, he said Selangor was the largest contributor at 27.5 per cent followed by Penang (21.1 per cent), Johor (20.4 per cent) and Kuala Lumpur (8.7 per cent).

He said Malaysia’s exports decreased 1.1 per cent to RM728.5 billion for the January-September 2019 period from RM736.8 billion in the same period in 2018, while imports declined 3.3 per cent to RM627.7 billion compared to RM649.3 billion previously.

– BERNAMA