Malaysia's economy continues expanding.(Brief article)

Looking ahead to the first quarter 2008, the Malaysia Department of Statistics says that the country's economy will continue expanding. This conclusion is based on the most recent Leading Indicators report (September 2007) published by the statistics agency. Specifically, the forecast relies on a smoothed, six month average calculation of the Leading Indicator, which shows a rate of growth of 6.0 percent.

Growth of the Leading Indicator (LI) was 7.4 percent in August 2007, but it declined to 6.0 percent in September 2007.

Malaysia's Coincident Indicator (CI), which is more sensitive to developments impacting directly on the country's consumers, registered a gain of 0.3 percent in September 2007, moving to 123.3 points in September 2007 from 122.9 points in August 2007.

The statistics agency said that the September 2007 gain was attributable to growth of salaries and wages in the manufacturing sector, and manufacturing sales. Malaysia's housing permits approved index gained 0.3 percent in September 2007 as well.

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