Malaysia GDP Growth Improves In Q2

(RTTNews) - Malaysia's economic growth improved in the second quarter driven by strong domestic demand amid global trade distortions, advance estimates from the Department of Statistics showed on Friday.

Gross domestic product expanded 4.5 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, slightly faster than the 4.4 percent growth seen in the first quarter.

Production-side breakdown of GDP showed that the annual growth was largely underpinned by services and manufacturing sectors.

Services output posted a faster growth of 5.3 percent, following a 5.0 percent rise a quarter ago. At the same time, growth in manufacturing slowed to 3.8 percent from 4.1 percent.

In addition, the construction and agriculture sectors recorded better growth. Construction output registered a double-digit expansion of 11.0 percent and the farm sector grew 2.0 percent.

Conversely, the mining and quarrying sector continued to experience a contraction. Mining output was down 7.4 percent.

Quarter-on-quarter, the economy grew 1.0 percent, in contrast to a contraction of 3.5 percent in the first quarter.

Another official data showed that the trade surplus declined sharply to MYR 14.48 billion in the second quarter from MYR 41.04 billion in the prior quarter.

In June, the trade surplus increased to MYR 8.59 billion in June from MYR 0.76 billion in the previous month.

Exports logged an annual fall of 3.5 percent, worse than the 1.2 percent decrease in May. At the same time, growth in imports eased to 1.2 percent from 6.6 percent.