Malaysian Economic Indicators - Leading, Coincident and Lagging Indexes February 2013 (Updated: 23/04/2013)

Highlights

The Leading Index (LI) which monitors the economic performance in advance rose 1.4% to 115.3 points from 113.7 points recorded in the previous month. The positive change in the current month was supported by the increase of three main components which were Real Imports of Other Basic Precious & Other Non-ferrous Metal (0.6%), Number of Housing Units Approved (0.4%) and Bursa Malaysia Industrial Index (0.3%).The annual change of the LI recorded a slower growth of 1.1% as against 1.5% in January 2013.

The Coincident Index (CI) which measures the current economic activity, dropped by 1.7% in February 2013. The negative change was due to the major decline in Real Contributions to EPF (-0.5%), Capacity Utilisation in Manufacturing Sector (-0.4%) and Volume Index of Retail Trade (-0.4%). The annual change of the CI in February 2013 also declined to negative 0.2% from 4.3% in the preceding month.

The annual change of the LI and CI showed a slower growth as compared with the previous month. However, the LI still above its long term trend and supported by both Diffusion Indexes above 50.0%. This indicates that the Malaysian economy will continue to expand in the months ahead.

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