GEORGE TOWN, Oct 27 — InvestPenang’s director Datuk Lee Kah Choon said today that Penang’s economy will likely experience a slowdown next year, a ripple effect from the weaker GDP growth predicted for Malaysia in 2016.
“Malaysia as a whole had forecasted a drop in GDP growth to 4.5 per cent while the GDP growth for 2015 was 5.5 per cent,” Lee told a press conference here today.
He said a weaker GDP growth for Malaysia will affect investor sentiment and inevitably adversely impact Penang.
Lee said, however, that the lower GDP forecast, which was largely due to declining commodity prices, the strong US dollar and a slowdown in China, was not unique to Malaysia.
“Even for Singapore, they narrowly avoided a negative growth with a GDP growth of 0.1 per cent for the first half of this year,” he said.
He pointed out that even Indonesia is not doing well economically.
As far as Penang is concerned, Lee said the state has been very resilient so far in facing any economic situation.
“The job market here is still stable, we have enough jobs for locals and we are even attracting Malaysians from other states to come to work here,” he said.
The unemployment rate in the state was at 1.6 per cent last year and was lowered to 1.2 per cent by the fourth quarter last year.
“Even if there’s massive unemployment, these workers can be easily absorbed by companies here so we are in a better position now to weather any possible unemployment scenario,” he said.
As of the first half of this year, there were a total 13,199 new job openings in the state as compared to 17,896 jobs in 2014.
Lee also believes that despite a possible economic slowdown, investments to Penang will remain good.
Penang had attracted RM48.2 billion in investments between 2008 and 2014, an increase of 93 per cent compared to the RM24.9 billion between 2001 and 2007.
