Malaysian Economic Indicators - Leading, Coincident and Lagging Indexes January 2013 (Updated: 22/03/2013)

Highlights

The Leading Index (LI) which monitors the economic performance in advance increased in January 2013. The LI grew by 0.6% to 113.5 points from 112.8 points recorded in December 2012. Two main components that accounted for the increase were Real Imports of Other Basic Precious and Other Non-ferrous Metal (0.4%) and Real Imports of Semi Conductors (0.3%). The annual change of the LI remained at 1.3% in the reference month.

The Coincident Index (CI) which measures the current economic activity, increased 0.7% in January 2013. The positive change in the reference month was due to the increase of three main components which were Capacity Utilisation in Manufacturing Sector (0.4%), Real Contribution to EPF and Volume Index of Retail Trade which recorded 0.2% increase, respectively. The annual change of the CI in January 2013 also rose to 3.7% from 3.3% in the preceding month.


The annual change of the LI and CI showed an improvement in the reference month with the level of Diffusion Index for both indexes above 50.0%. This implies that the Malaysian economy is expected to expand further in the near term.

(The complete indicators on Leading, Coincident and Lagging Indexes are shown in the following Table 4 ).