KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian economy is expected to continue its recovery trend, according to economic indicators measured by the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM).
In a statement, chief statistician Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin said the Leading Index (LI) had reached 108.5 points in August 2020 from 100.8 points in August 2019, maintaining an annual growth of 7.6 per cent.
On month-on-month (MoM) comparison, however, the LI slipped to negative 0.5 per cent.
This was dragged by lower number of new companies registered (-0.6 per cent), real imports of semiconductors (-0.4 per cent) and number of housing units approved (-0.1 per cent).
Mohd Uzir said despite the softer LI for the reference month, the growth rate of smoothed LI was consistently above trend and moving upwards.
"This implies that the Malaysian economy is expected to continue its recovery trend in the months ahead," he said.
He cautioned that the downside risk to growth remained amid the recent spike in Covid-19 cases.
Meanwhile, the Coincident Index (CI) which measures the current economic performance, signals for a better growth this year after registering negative 2.3 per cent versus negative 2.4 per cent in July 2020.
On a monthly basis, the CI rose to 0.5 per cent, supported by the increase in Volume Index of Retail Trade (0.5 per cent) and real salaries and wages in manufacturing sector (0.1 per cent).
Mohd Uzir said the Diffusion Index for LI recorded an improvement of 71.4 per cent in August from 57.1 per cent in July.
As for the labour force statistics, the number of employed persons rose by 0.5 per cent to 15.2 million persons, contributed mainly by the services sectors.