August 2013 Industrial Production

Too good to last? The IPI has come back down to earth (log annual and monthly changes; seasonally adjusted):

July 2013 Employment

The July employment numbers depict a healthy economy, quite at odds with the growth numbers (‘000):

July 2013 External Trade

Friday’s trade report was a pleasant surprise (log annual and monthly changes; seasonally adjusted):

[Note: I’m still using my old seasonally adjusted figures, even though DOS now issues there own. I’ll be shifting over to the official figures as and when I manage to find time to transfer the data in. The differences between the adjusted series does not substantively change the following analysis]

July 2012 External Trade

Last week’s trade report from Matrade showed continued weakness in external demand for Malaysian products. As I thought they might, my July forecasts came in above realisation (log annual and monthly changes; seasonally adjusted):

Seasonally adjusted exports in July came in –1.2% on the year and –6.7% on the month, while imports were up 9.3% and 2.0% in log terms.

June 2012 External Trade

There’s quite frankly not going to be a whole lot of posts until the week after Hari Raya, just a few quick ones on data releases as they come. With luck something like normal posting volume should resume after the Raya break.

Today’s releases of last month’s trade numbers weren’t terribly inspiring (log annual and monthly changes; seasonally adjusted):

Although exports registered an increase of 5.3% y-o-y in log terms, that’s well below the double-digit growth projections from both my models.

May 2012 External Trade

Yesterday’s trade report from Matrade indicates that export growth jumped in May, but not as much as my models say they should have (log annual and monthly changes; seasonally adjusted):

Exports hit 7.0% on the year in log terms (6.7% in percentage terms) and 2.0% higher than last month’s level. Crude oil exports fell, but this was offset by higher LNG and CPO exports.

April 2012 Employment Update

The latest employment numbers from DOS shows the economy shedding about 15k jobs in April:

With both labour force and employment growth slowing, the unemployment rate has increased somewhat to about 3.0%:

There’s little more to add to that, apart from noting that we’re still looking at unemployment well below the NAIRU, if BNM is to be believed. That continues to suggest that monetary policy is unlikely to be loosened this year, especially since inflation is also on the decline.

Technical Notes:

April 2012 Employment report from the Department of Statistics (warning: pdf link)

April 2012 External Trade

Today’s external trade report from Matrade suggests that all the weirdness from the beginning of the year has finally settled down and we’re finally seeing some true trends. Unfortunately, the trend doesn’t look very good (log annual and monthly changes; seasonally adjusted):

March 2012 External Trade: Down To Earth

I’ve been out of commission for much of the past week or so due to an infection, hence the lack of posts. But since I’m hopefully on the mend, I should be resuming blogging more regularly from today. There’s a lot to catch up on, so I’ll be spacing out the posts over the next few days.

Now on to the latest data release. March 2012 external trade numbers shows that the February trade was an aberration or largely a factor of CNY. They're certainly well below what I predicted last month (log annual and monthly changes; seasonally adjusted):

February 2012 Employment Report

There’s some mixed news to report on the employment front, with last week’s employment report showing a slight uptick in the headline unemployment rate caused by a reduction of 107k jobs:

That looks more like statistical “noise” to me, especially since DOS’ seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is well below the unadjusted rate as is my own seasonally adjusted estimate:

So as far as employment is concerned, despite the yo-yo movements in trade and industrial production, the economy is still humming along a little above potential.

On a side note, the DOS report still reads like it was generated by Google translator. Surely they can get somebody to do proper translations – it’s not that expensive.

Technical Notes:

February 2012 Employment Report from the Department of Statistics (warning: pdf link)

February 2012 External Trade: Looking Up

So much for trade continuing to be depressed. How much of this is simply trade orders pushed back because of CNY, I don’t know, but based on Tuesday’s external trade report, things are perking up on the external front (log annual and monthly changes; seasonally adjusted):

January 2012 Employment Report

The seasonal adjustment revolution marches on. This time, the employment numbers get the treatment, though sadly, they don’t go back through the whole available series, nor has DOS provided anything more than the unemployment rate itself. I suppose beggars can’t be choosers though.

In any case, employment increased marginally in January (remember, it’s CNY):

My own seasonal adjustment suggests that employment growth probably should have been a lot higher (about 177k more), but data for this January is so skewed this year, I have trouble believing in any of it.

The unemployment rate has dropped again, though the new seasonally adjusted DOS figures show a sharp drop:

Comparing the series, it seems as if DOS’ series is a lot more volatile. Be that as it may, all three series are turning down. Coupled with my reading of the remarks at yesterday’s analysts’ briefing with BNM yesterday, I think what we have here is an economy that’s heating up ever so slightly. I thought core inflation was on the high side last year, and it seemed as if it came from more than just the pass through of prices from the supply side. This year looks like more of the same, though we’ve got far more investment projects coming on stream, and growth is already back on its long term trend.

I’m not about to call BNM hawkish, but if there is any bias towards monetary policy this year, I suspect it will increasingly be towards raising interest rates.

Technical Notes:

January 2012 Employment Report from the Department of Statistics (warning: pdf link)

January 2012 Industrial Production: Some Congrats Are In Order

Not for the numbers, they aren’t that encouraging…in fact they look downright bad. But rather DOS is slowly but surely rolling out seasonally adjusted  numbers that account for the peculiarities of the Malaysian calendar. It started last year with the trade numbers, and this month we’ve got a seasonally adjusted IPI. Thumbs up guys.

If I have a complaint, the English notes on DOS’ seasonal adjustment procedure read like they came out of Google Translator. It’s not laugh out loud funny as some of the Ministry of Defense’s, but still…

January 2012 External Trade: In The Dumps

Yesterday’s external trade report showed Malaysia’s exports following the regional trend (log annual and monthly changes; seasonally adjusted):

December 2011 External Trade

Like industrial production (see my previous post), Malaysia’s trade numbers came in higher than expected (log annual and monthly changes; seasonally adjusted):

Both on a seasonally adjusted and non-seasonally adjusted basis, exports came in at around RM2 billion more than my forecast models predicted, though that’s still only about 0.4 standard deviations from the point forecast.

November 2011 Employment

I’m settling in and having fun at my new workplace, so I should begin blogging a bit more regularly soon. To be honest though, I might not have as much time to do that as I might wish. It’s been a pretty hectic couple of days, even without dealing with the (non-existent) city traffic – which by the way means that January economic numbers aren’t going to look good, as very few people are actually working this last week and more.

But back to business - quite unexpectedly (at least by me), the economy cut 250k jobs in November (’000):

November 2011 External Trade: Within Expectations

Mean reversion, here we come. As expected, November export numbers tripped up a bit (log annual and monthly changes; seasonally adjusted):

October 2011 External Trade

Friday’s trade numbers underscore the resilience of the economy as shown by industrial production. Not quite out of the forecast band, but about 1 standard deviation away from the predicted value (RM millions):

October 2011 Industrial Production

Why is everyone so pessimistic? I understand the concern over Europe, but that’s primarily a financial problem and not yet a real economy problem. It hasn’t come to the point that we need to jump the gun and declare the Malaysian economy is going down the tubes (excerpt):

Slower IPI, export growth expected

PETALING JAYA: There will be further indications of a slowdown in factory output when the Statistics Department releases data on October's industrial production index (IPI) today while export growth is seen slowing when the data on external trade is out tomorrow.

Economists in a Bloomberg survey expect the IPI to grow a median 1.6% on a year-on-year basis versus the 2.5% expansion in September. This would mean manufacturing production would be expanding at the slowest pace since March.

They expect exports to grow by a median 7.3% in October from a year ago after the unexpected 16.6% jump in exports in September.

Luckily, the economy’s not listening to the analysts (log annual and monthly changes; seasonally adjusted; 2000=100):

3Q 2011 GDP: Beating Estimates

Despite a lot of evidence, seems nobody could quite believe that Malaysia’s economy could keep growing – the consensus growth forecast for 3Q2011 was just 4.8%. Consider this some proof that there’s some fire with that smoke (log annual changes; log quarterly changes, seasonally adjusted and annualised):