Highlight Malaysia's June IPI climbs 7% on year, beats forecast

by **Cals** Mon 11 Aug 2014, 22:47

Highlight Malaysia's June IPI climbs 7% on year, beats forecast

Business & Markets 2014

Written by Gho Chee Yuan of theedgemalaysia.com

Monday, 11 August 2014 13:05

KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 11): Malaysia's June 2014 industrial production index (IPI) rose 7% from a year earlier. The rise was contributed by increases in the manufacturing, mining and electricity components of the IPI.

The Statistics Department said in a statement on its website today that manufacturing and mining output rose 9.1% and 1.4% respectively, while electricity production increased 6.5%.

"For the second quarter 2014, Malaysia's IPI expanded by 5.9% y-o-y. In monthly terms, June IPI increased 0.5% from May.

"The (monthly) jump (in June IPI) was contributed by the rise of both mining index and electricity index of 0.9% and 3.3% respectively despite manufacturing index registering a decrease of 0.3%," the department said.

The year-on-year growth in June IPI had beaten market forecast, based on Reuters' median estimates.

A Reuters poll earlier had shown that June IPI output probably grew 5% from a year earlier, supported by rising global demand for electronic products. Reuters reported that economists expected the production to be led by manufacturing while electricity and mining sectors grew at modest rates.

Meanwhile, the Statistics Department said in a separate statement Malaysia's June manufacturing sales rose 3.8% to RM53.3 billion from RM53.1 billion a year earlier.

The department said manufacturing sales growth came on higher transaction value for items including refined petroleum products and semiconductor devices.

On a month-on-month basis, the sales value in June decreased by 1.5%.

For the period of January to June 2014, the sales value of the manufacturing sector expanded by 8.8% to register RM324.7 billion.