Malaysia's growth expected to moderate

Malaysia's growth expected to moderate

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP): Malaysia's robust economic growth is expected to moderate over the next year before picking up in 1998, the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research said yesterday.

The country's gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to ease to 8.3 percent this year from a dizzying 9.5 percent growth last year due to a slowdown in exports and slower growth in private investment, it said.

"Real GDP growth is forecast to be sustained at 8.2 percent in 1997, picking up to 8.5 percent in 1998 when Malaysia plays host to the Commonwealth Games," the institute's executive director, Sulaiman Mahboob, told at a seminar on the national economic outlook.

Malaysia's GDP has been growing at an average of more than eight percent annually since 1987.

MIER forecast the country's current account deficit would narrow to 13.067 billion ringgit (US$5.227 billion) this year from 17.8 billion ringgit last year.

The current account deficit -- measuring the deficit in trade, services, debt payments and other overseas transactions, would fall to 12.411 billion ringgit in 1997 and 12.471 billion ringgit the following year, it said.