Malaysia's Economy Shrugged Off Sluggish External Demand In Q207 As Economic Growth...

Malaysia's Economy Shrugged Off Sluggish External Demand In Q207 As Economic Growth Accelerated For The First Time In A Year

DUBLIN, Ireland--(Business Wire)--
Research and Markets
(http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c88922) has announced the
addition of "Malaysia Commercial Banking Report Q1 2008" to their
offering.

The Malaysia Commercial Banking Report provides independent
forecasts and competitive intelligence on Malaysia's commercial
banking industry.

From Q108 we will be calculating the Commercial Banking Business
Environment Rating (CBBER) for each of the countries surveyed by BMI.
This will permit a more systematic and comprehensive comparison of the
conditions within the banking industries of the various countries than
was possible in the past. For each country, it will also facilitate a
comparison of the conditions within the banking sector and conditions
prevailing in other sectors.

Malaysia's overall CBBER is 67.5. Malaysia has a fairly high CBBER
compared to other countries in the Asia Pacific region surveyed by
BMI. Malaysia's overall CBBER is low compared to the regional leader
Hong Kong, but high in comparison to Sri Lanka's score of 28.4, the
lowest in the region. The banking market structure elements of the
limits to potential returns have, unsurprisingly, a higher score than
the country structure elements (67.5 versus 62.0). In a similar way,
the banking market risks elements of the risks to the realisation of
returns have a significantly higher score than the country risk rating
(76.7 versus 69.9).

Malaysia earns high scores for each of the four banking market
elements of the limits to potential returns. In relation to other
countries surveyed by BMI, Malaysia is a country where total assets
are large, the likely growth in total assets is large, the expected
growth in client loans is very large and there is reasonably good
potential for banks to earn fees from distribution of insurance
products and other activities. The key areas keeping the score lower
than it could be are legal and bureaucratic elements of the country
risk.

Despite risks to the key export sector, strong performances in the
mining and services sectors, and improving private consumption,
boosted by increased government spending, will ensure economic growth
remains robust.

Malaysia's economy shrugged off sluggish external demand in Q207
as economic growth accelerated for the first time in a year. Economic
growth surprised on the upside, increasing 5.7% year-on-year (y-o-y)
to beat market forecasts of a 5.5% expansion, bringing annualised
economic growth for the first half of 2007 to 5.6% after the central
bank revised up Q1 growth to 5.5%. With growth momentum expected to
pick up further in the second half of the year, we recognise that
there are upside risks to our full-year estimate of 5.5%, but, having
said this, we still see a number of reasons to remain cautious towards
Malaysia's growth prospects.

For more information, visit
here

Research and Markets
Laura Wood
Senior Manager
press@researchandmarkets.com
Fax: +353 1 4100 980

Copyright Business Wire 2008