Malaysia’s economy is poised to expand in the second half of 2017 based on the positive leading index and coincident index for May, the Statistics Department reported Monday. It said the LI, which monitors the economic performance in advance increased in May 2017. It rose 1.2% to 118.6 points in May from 117.2 points in April, The Star online reported. Six of the seven LI components recorded positive growth led by real imports of other basic precious and other non-ferrous metal (0.6%) and number of new companies registered (0.2%). “The annual change of LI improved to 1.9% in May 2017 from 1.3% in the preceding month,” it said. The main components that contributed to the increase were real salaries and wages in manufacturing sector (0.3%), total employment in manufacturing sector (0.2%) and real contributions to the Employees Provident Fund (0.2%). Gross domestic product for the first quarter of 2017 continued to expand with a growth of 5.6% as compared to 4.5% in the previous quarter.
