Leading index up 0.2% to 120.1 in October

S&P Ratings estimates that 37% of corporates (based on a global sample of 13,000 entities) could be categorised as highly leveraged in 2017 (i.e. debt-to-earnings of above five times), that's five points more than in 2007.

KUALA LUMPUR: The Leading Index (LI), which monitors economic performance in advance, and the Coincident Index, which measures current economic activity, have improved in October 2017 compared to the previous month.

In a statement today, the Department of Statistics Malaysia said the LI registered a growth of 0.2% in October 2017 to 120.1 points from 119.9 points in September 2017, mainly induced by real money supply (0.4%) and the number of new companies registered (0.3%).

“The annual change of LI rose to 3.2% against the 2.5% recorded in September 2017,” it said.

Meanwhile, the Coincident Index (CI) increased by 0.5% in October 2017, following the increase in three components, namely Volume Index of Retail Trade (0.4%), Real Contributions to Employees Provident Fund (0.1%) and Capacity Utilisation in Manufacturing Sector (0.1%).

It said the annual change of CI grew to 3.5% in the same month.

“Concurrently, the Diffusion Index for CI reached 100%, while LI remained at 85.7%, thus indicating that Malaysia's economy will continue a favourable growth between February and April 2018,” it added. - Bernama