August 2010 Economic Indicators

The latest Economic Indicators report from the Department of Statistics brings some short relief to the economic outlook – but we’re still not out of the woods yet:

All the indexes have turned up again, though not by much. I’m not sure how much the heightened consumption that comes with Ramadhan would affect the underlying data – M1 always jumps during festival months for instance.

But the smoothed growth rates aren’t signalling a further deterioration in economic conditions:

I’m inclined to accept this as a sign that growth bottomed out in July-August (q-o-q forecast: 0%), and we’ll see stronger growth in 4Q, although it’s never a good idea to ascribe too much to data behaviour in one month.

Technical Notes:

August 2010 Malaysia Economic Indicators report from the Department of Statistics