Economist: 2017 Could Be A Better Year For Malaysia

PETALING JAYA (Selangor, Malaysia), Nov 2 (Bernama) -- Global trade is expected to pick up steam in 2017 and is poised to help Malaysia maintain its momentum of becoming a high-income nation by 2020. Sunway University Business School Economics Professor, Dr Yeah Kim Leng, said the US economic recovery was the main factor that would drive global trade and thus would benefit Malaysia. He said Malaysia's elasticity or reponsiveness and dependence on global trade was very high, that even a one per cent change in the value of global trade could have a significant impact on Malaysia, which recorded a surplus in exports since November 1997. "Based on a consistent growth of over four per cent expected to be achieved in the coming years, we should be able to be in the league of high-income countries," he said in a presentation at the Real Estate and Housing Developers' Association Malaysia (REHDA) Institute's Post-Budget Commentary 2017 session here Wednesday. The government, through some transformation programme launched previously, aimed to help Malaysia achieve high-income status with a per capita income of US$15,000. However, according to the World Bank's 2015 report, a group of high-income countries' per capita income is at the US$12,476 level. Meanwhile, on the 2017 Budget, Yeah said it was poised to meet some of the country's needs, especially involving the control of government spending and keep the people's interest to buy houses by a rebalancing act in the property sector through focus on affordable homes. "The allocation for the housing sector is not very high and the expenditure by the government is more focused primarily on the provision of affordable homes. "House prices are still increasing, although not very significant. It is high time the private housing developers to make adjustments by focusing on the construction of affordable housing," he said. On inflation, Yeah noted that the September 2016 consumer price index had eased to 1.5 per cent. "It is a downtrend but (is) now gradually picking up especially with fuel and several other items that had been revised upwards. "It is important for the Government to actually look into how the adjustment of the prices will impact the overall cost of living in Malaysia," he said. --BERNAMA