Malaysian Economic Indicators - Leading, Coincident and Lagging Indexes March 2013 (Updated: 15/05/2013)

Highlights

The Leading Index (LI) which monitors the economic performance in advance showed an increase of 1.0% to 116.3 points for the month of March 2013 compared to 115.2 points in the previous month. Two components that significantly contributed to the increase were Real Imports of Semi Conductors (0.6%) and Real Money Supply, M1 (0.4%). The annual change of the LI also rose to 2.8% as against 1.0% in the previous month.

The Coincident Index (CI) which measures the current economic activity, grew by 1.6% in March 2013. This was attributed to the major increase in Real Salaries & Wages in Manufacturing Sector (0.7%) and Total Employment in Manufacturing Sector (0.5%). The annual change of the CI in March 2013 also increased to 2.2% from 0.5% in the preceding month.

The annual change of the LI and CI showed an improvement in the reference month as shown in Chart 1 and 2A. Supported by the level of Diffusion Index for both indexes above 50.0%, this implies that the Malaysian economy will grow further in the following months.

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