Year: 2021

KUALA LUMPUR— Malaysia’s burgeoning trade performance has been a bright spot among Southeast Asian (SEA) economies, Moody’s Analytics associate economist Sonia Zhu said.

She said exports surged 63 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y), but the strong growth rate is inflated by the low-base effect, when exports nosedived during the peak of the pandemic and the subsequent full lockdown last year.

But on an encouraging note, exports still rose 0.6 per cent month-on-month (m-o-m), she added.

“As expected, the main contributor to exports was electrical and electronics products such as semiconductors and integrated circuits.

“While Singapore and China remained the major countries of exports, totalling close to one-third of Malaysia’s total exports,” she said in a statement Monday.

While imports increased 24.4 per cent y-o-y and 5.4 per cent m-o-m, exceeding expectations, with the increase broad-based across all three categories (intermediate goods, capital goods, and consumption goods).

Consumption goods increased due to higher imports of durable goods demanded during the Aidilfitri festive period, which lasts for one month from April to May, she added.

“An increase in intermediate goods and capital goods, which account for a total of 65 per cent of import value, is a welcome sign that Malaysia is ramping up manufacturing production for exports.

“Despite battling with record high COVID-19 infections domestically, all manufacturing plants are still operating at above 50 per cent capacity,” she said.

Zhu said Malaysia plays an integral role in the global supply chain and continues to benefit from higher global demand.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

KUALA LUMPUR— Businesses are more confident in the second quarter (Q2) of 2021 with a better overall confidence indicator of -3.1 per cent against -11.3 per cent recorded in the last quarter, according to the Business Tendency Statistics for Second Quarter 2021.

Chief statistician Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin said the findings were obtained based on the results of survey conducted between March 10 and April 26, 2021 prior to the alarming rise of COVID-19 cases nationwide.

He said the businesses’ perceptions did not consider the implementation of the Movement Control Order (MCO) 3.0, which was expanded to the whole country effective May 12, 2021 and also full lockdown on June 1.

“Therefore, the business expectations are mainly driven by the situation of COVID-19 cases, which slowed down at that particular time along with the National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme and the initiatives undertaken to revive the economy,” he said in a statement Monday.

He said all sectors foresaw brighter business situation for the second quarter of 2021 if the economic wellbeing was under control.

Among them, he said the wholesale and retail trade sector soared to positive territory for the first time since the third quarter of 2019 with +5.6 per cent in the second quarter of 2021 compared to -11.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2021.

He said the confidence indicator for industry and services sectors improved to -1.5 per cent and -6.1 per cent respectively compared to -4.4 per cent and -15.0 per cent in the preceding quarter.

“At the same time, the construction sector remains as the most pessimistic sector during the reference quarter with better perspective of -30.5 per cent against -51.2 per cent in the previous quarter,” he said.

Mohd Uzir said overall, business perception for April until September 2021 surged to positive trajectory with a net balance of +11 per cent as against -4.6 per cent recorded previously.

He added that all sectors registered turnaround in their net balance where Industry and wholesale and retail trade became the most optimistic sectors with net balance of +12.5 per cent recorded each in the forthcoming six months.

The Business Tendency Statistics for Second Quarter 2021, based on the quarterly conducted Business Tendency Survey, presents expectations on business performance for the upcoming quarter and six months ahead.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK