Friday 29 Mar 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR (June 12): AmBank Group Research expects Malaysia’s economy to maintain a credible growth in 2018.

In a note today, AmBank Group chief economist and head of research Dr Anthony Dass said Malaysia’s industrial production (IP) in April grew faster than expected, up 4.6% year-on-year (y/y), beating consensus of 3.7% and his of 4.2%, supported by broad-based growth from all the three sub-indices i.e. manufacturing (5.3% y/y), electricity (5.8% y/y) and mining (1.8% y/y).

Dass said the strong manufacturing output was supported by the E&E and manufacturing sales.

“We expect the economy to maintain a credible growth in 2018. We reiterate our 2018 GDP projection of 5.5% and 5.3% for 2019, supported by domestic activities and exports.

“With manufacturing wages continuing to grow strongly by 10.2% y/y in April, added with the removal of the GST that will be replaced with the SST, moderate inflation of 2.0%–2.5%, the USD/MYR to stabilise around 3.90–93, and steady OPR at 3.25%, these should underpin private spending and business activities,” he said.

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