Malaysia
KUALA LUMPUR: The Statistics Department sees the economy growing at a firmer pace in the August to October period, underpinned by a stronger leading index (LI).
The chief statistician, Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin said on Tuesday the outlook was supported by a stronger LI which monitors the economic direction in advance.
“A 2.6% surge in monthly change of LI to attain 120.0 points in April 2019 from 117.0 points in March 2019 was mainly underpinned by the increase in real imports of semiconductors (0.8%) and real imports of other basic precious & other non-ferrous metals (0.7%).
“At the same time, the annual change of LI improved further to 0.4 per cent in the reference month,” he said the statement on the economic indicators – leading, coincident and lagging indexes for April.
Mohd Uzir said the current economic situation measured by the coincident index (CI) improved by 0.4% in April 2019.
Industrial production index and real contributions to Employees Provident Fund (EPF) were the significant contributors to the increase with a growth of 0.2%, respectively.
The CI rose 2.7% in April, he said.
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