Leading Index up 2.6% in August, year on year

PETALING JAYA: The Leading Index (LI), which monitors economic performance in advance, increased 2.6% year-on-year in August 2017, according to the Department of Statistics Malaysia.
In a statement today, the department said the monthly change of LI rose 1.9% to 120.3 points in August 2017, against 118.1 points in the previous month.
It said the main components that contributed to the increase were number of housing units approved (0.7%), number of new companies registered (0.6%) and real imports of semiconductors (0.5%).
However, the Coincident Index (CI) which measures the current economic activity decreased 0.4% in August 2017, due to the decrease in volume index of retail trade (-0.3%), capacity utilisation in manufacturing sector (-0.2%) and total employment in manufacturing sector (-0.2%).
Nevertheless, the annual change of CI improved further to 4.5% in August 2017.
The department said the increase is in line with the growth of gross domestic product at a constant price, which expanded 5.8% in the second quarter of 2017 from 5.6% in the previous quarter.