KL manufacturing sales rise 13.5%

KL manufacturing sales rise 13.5%

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: Malaysia's manufacturing sales rose 13.5 percent to 29.4 billion ringgit (US$7.7 billion) in February compared to the same month last year, the government announced on Friday.

But on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, manufacturing sales eased 0.7 percent from January, the Department of Statistics said.

The on-year data exceeded market expectations of a rise of between 8 percent and 11 percent.

Economists didn't expect the on-year February figures to be as strong as January's because of a high base effect, but they said manufacturing sales would continue to show solid gains due to robust export and industrial output figures in that month.

The February data follow January's 11.6 percent on-year rise.

At the end of February, 3.5 percent more people were employed in the manufacturing sector than a year earlier, boosting workers in the sector to 974,394, the statistics agency said. But the sector's work force contracted 0.4 percent from the end of January. -- AP