KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 22 — Malaysia’s economic growth is expected to ease between January and March 2019, says the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DoSM).
In the “Malaysian Economic Indicators: Leading, Coincident & Lagging Indexes for September 2018” report released today, Chief Statistician Datuk Seri Mohd Uzir Mahidin said the annual change of the Leading Index (LI) stated that the index decreased 1.7 per cent in the reference month.
The LI is designed to monitor the economic performance direction in an average of four to six months ahead.
Concurrently, he said, the monthly change of LI posted a negative growth of 0.8 per cent to 117.9 points in the same month as against 118.9 points in August 2018.
“This was due to the decline in real imports of semiconductors (-0.4 per cent), real imports of other basic precious & other non-ferrous metals (-0.4 per cent) and number of housing units approved (-0.3 per cent),” he said.
Meanwhile, the Coincident Index (CI), which examines the current economic activity, decreased 0.7 per cent in September 2018, said Mohd Uzir.
Three out of six components weighed down the performance of the CI, mainly the Volume Index of Retail Trade which slipped 0.9 per cent, he said, adding that the annual change of CI grew 3.4 per cent in the reference month.
DoSM noted that the Diffusion Index for LI performed better in September 2018 at 57.1 per cent while the Diffusion Index for CI has remained at 83.3 per cent since August 2018. — Bernama
