Friday 26 Apr 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR (May 25): The momentum of Malaysia’s economy is expected to continue growing in the third quarter of 2018, said the Department of Statistics Malaysia today. 

In a statement highlighting the performance of Malaysian Economic Indicators: Leading, Coincident & Lagging Indexes March 2018, the department said today that the annual change of Leading Index (LI) increased by 0.3% against 1.8% in the previous month.

The LI indicators are designed to monitor the economic performance in average of four to six months ahead.

“However, the monthly change of LI showed a negative growth of 0.5 per cent in the reference month. This was mainly due to the deceleration of the Number of Housing Units Approved to negative 0.7 per cent (February 2018: 0.3%),” the department said.

Meanwhile, it said the Coincident Index (CI) which examines the current economic activity, rose 0.6% in March 2018, driven by the increase in Real Contribution to EPF (0.4%), Volume Index of Retail Trade (0.3%), Total Employment in Manufacturing sector (0.2%), and Real Salaries & Wages in Manufacturing sector (0.1%). 

The annual change of CI stepped up to 3.4% in the reference month, as compared to 3.1% in February 2018.

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