Malaysian Economic Indicators: Leading, Coincident & Lagging Indexes May 2015

     The Leading Index (LI) which monitors the economic performance in advance decreased in May 2015. The LI posted a decrease of 1.2% to 117.2 points from 118.6 points in April 2015.Two main components that contributed to the decrease were Real Imports of Other Basic Precious & Other Non-ferrous Metal (-0.7%) and Number of New Companies Registered (-0.6%).The annual change of LI dropped to negative 0.2% as against 0.9% in the previous month.     The Coincident Index (CI) which measures the current economic activity, also declined by 0.4% in the reference month. This was due to the decrease in Real Contributions to EPF (-0.5%), Volume Index of Retail Trade (-0.3%) and Total Employment in Manufacturing Sector (-0.1%). The annual change of CI slowed to 2.1% as compared to 2.3% in April 2015.     The annual change of LI and CI in May 2015 showed a slower growth as compared to the previous month. At the same time, the Diffusion Index for LI was below 50.0%, while CI remained above 50.0%. Based on this scenario, it is expected that the Malaysian economy will continue to grow at a slower rate in the following months
composite index and diffusion index
malaysia budget