KUALA LUMPUR, May 15 — Malaysia can expect to have a hard time growing its economy over the next five years amid a predicted economic slowdown in emerging markets, a Financial Times (FT) blog said yesterday.

The EM Squared blog said emerging economies are expanding at an annual rate of less than 4 per cent for the first time since the 2009 financial crisis, citing a tracker run by the consultancy Capital Economics.

“Countries such as Malaysia have high levels of private sector debt that may also take a long time to work off, particularly if an appreciating dollar and rising US interest rates make servicing that debt more expensive,” said the report.

This comes as Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) announced today that growth has fallen in the first quarter of 2015 to 5.6 per cent, down from 5.7 per cent in 2014’s last quarter.

According to BNM, the fall was due to weaker exports, and looks to continue in this quarter due to the roll-out of the Goods and Services tax (GST).

Despite that, BNM has refrained from joining its global counterparts in easing monetary policy, saying interest rates are delivering support for growth while guarding against inflation risks.

The FT blog claimed that recovering from this projected slowdown will be tough as unlike previous downturns, the cyclical nature of economic growth is bogged down by structural weakness.

This means that even with a loose domestic policy and accommodative external conditions, economic growth will still remain only modest, the blog warned.

Among other challenges facing the countries, including Malaysia, are rising bond yields despite the slow growth and inflation, it added.

The blog also suggested that companies will be looking to cut down its expenses instead of investing despite the lower interest rate, as corporate profit falls.

EM Squared claimed that the performance of the emerging markets in the short term will depend most on China, and whether its economy will react to the stimulus through policy changes

“But even as and when it does recover, the likelihood of a sharp bounceback of the kind that accompanied the past two big emerging markets slowdowns is disturbingly low,” it warned.