Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 8): AmBank Group Research said both Malaysia’s exports and imports continued to perform favourably with November’s exports up for the 12th consecutive month at double digits by 20.4% year-on-year (y-o-y) while imports gained 21.2%% y-o-y, bringing the November’s trade balance at RM9.9 billion.

In an economic update today, AmBank group chief economist and head of research Anthony Dass said he remains upbeat on the economic performance in part due to strong imports and capital (12.2% y-o-y) and intermediate goods (13.8% y-o-y) which act as an injection to the overall economic activity.

“Besides, we foresee exports will continue to aid the overall economic activity.

“Henceforth, we believe the domestic economy will continue to perform strongly with our preliminary estimates showing the 4Q2017 gross domestic product (GDP) should be around 6.0% with our full-year 2017 at 5.9% and exports to grow by 21% y-o-y in 2017,” he said.

Dass said that for for 2018, his GDP outlook is 5.5% supported by domestic activities with exports to grow around 5%–6% in 2018 partly due to a high base.

“We expect the USD/ringgit to remain on a strong note with our end-period projection at 3.95 which is our base case and best case is at 3.76.

“Our full-year average outlook for the USD/ringgit is 4.00–4.02 as our base case and best case at the 3.80–82 levels,” he said.

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