KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 11): MIDF Research expects Malaysia’s retail trade to expand by 7.5% in 2024, on the back of resilient consumer demand, amid a healthy labour market and softening inflation pressure.
The research house said that in the first 11 months of 2023, Malaysia’s distributive trade sales increased by 7.9% year-on-year (y-o-y), with retail trade rising 9.4%.
Other components of distributive trade also improved, including sales of motor vehicles (up 13% y-o-y) and wholesale trade (5.3%).
Consumer demand remained firm and resilient, as reflected in the distributive trade sales performance, it said.
“Moving forward, the upbeat momentum of domestic demand is expected to continue in 2024 underpinned by a resilient labour market, stable inflationary pressure, a pickup in tourism activities, and supportive and accommodative economic policies,” MIDF said in a note.
In November 2023, Malaysia’s distributive trade posted a growth of 6.2% y-o-y, the slowest expansion rate since July.
On a month-on-month basis, non-seasonally-adjusted distributive trade inched up 0.2%.
By component, sales of motor vehicles continued its strong momentum with a 12.7% y-o-y growth, while wholesale trade rose by 6.2%, and retail sales swelled by 4.4%.
In terms of seasonally adjusted volume, distributive trade increased by 4.7% y-o-y, followed by retail trade (1%) and motor vehicles (10.6%).
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate hit a new post-pandemic low of 3.3% in November.
“Looking ahead, we foresee a sanguine domestic outlook for the fourth quarter of 2023 and 2024, amid a pickup in tourism activities, and supportive and accommodative economic policies on both fiscal and monetary sides,” MIDF said.
Source: theedgemalaysia.com
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