Malaysian economy expands 5.6% in first quarter

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s economy expanded by 5.6% in the first quarter ended March 31, 2015, underpinned by strong private consumption and private investment.
 
Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) announced on Friday that the GDP growth, on a quarter-on-quarter seasonally adjusted, grew at 1.2 per cent.
 
“GDP in current prices amounted to RM277.2bil in this quarter. In constant 2010 prices, GDP registered a value of RM254.4bil,” it said.
 
The firm GDP growth – which was above economists’ expectations of a 5.5% growth -- was driven by an 8.8% growth in private consumption and the 11.7% increase in private investment.
 
The GDP growth in Q1 2015 at 5.6% was slower when compared with a year ago when the economy expanded at 6.3%.
 
Private investment was driven by capital spending in the export-oriented manufacturing industries and the services sector together with on-going multi-year investment projects.
 
BNM said the current account surplus improved in the quarter to 3.7% or RM10bil of gross national income.

However, gross exports declined due to higher exports in the previous corresponding quarter.
 
Meanwhile, the Statistics Department said the services sector recorded a steady growth of 6.4%. The growth was mainly led by wholesale & retail trade largely spearheaded by retail (10.7%) and wholesale (9.6%).
 
The manufacturing sector rose to 5.6% from 5.4% in the previous quarter. The growth was driven by electrical, electronic & optical products (9.3%), due to the production of domestic oriented industries such as consumer electronics and communication equipment.
 
Mining and quarrying sector posted a strong growth of 9.6%. The growth was primarily reflected by a double-digit increase in the production of crude oil. On the contrary, production of natural gas declined in this quarter.