KUALA LUMPUR – Businesses remain positive about their prospects for the second quarter (Q2) of 2022 as well as for the six-month period to September 2022, according to the Statistics Department’s (DoSM) latest business tendency data.
Chief statistician Datuk Seri Mohd Uzir Mahidin said going into Q2, businesses were positive albeit at a slower pace, with a confidence indicator of +3.5% for the quarter against +7.6% in the first quarter (Q1).
“Despite the reopening of Malaysia’s international borders, which is anticipated to spur economic activities, businesses stay cautious on their prospects amid inflation pressure, supply chain and labour shortage issues,” he said in a statement today.
Except for construction, all sectors surveyed anticipated better business conditions in Q2 2022.
“The wholesale and retail trade sector is the most optimistic on business outlook. The sector’s confidence indicator has increased for three quarters in a row, with +15.5% in Q2 2022 from +4.0% in the preceding quarter,” Uzir noted.
Based on the quarterly business tendency survey, brighter sentiment in both the wholesale trade subsector as well as the retail trade subsector led to this improvement.
Meanwhile, the services sector predicted the business situation to improve at a moderate rate, posting a confidence indicator of +5.6% compared to +11.1% in Q1 2022.
As for the industry sector, it expected its business performance to grow at a slower pace in Q2 2022 with an indicator of +0.8% compared to +12.2% in the preceding quarter.
The agriculture and mining subsectors, in particular, anticipated unfavourable business conditions in Q2, Uzir said.
Meanwhile, the construction sector remained pessimistic but its confidence indicator improved to -23.2% compared with -40.4% in Q1 2022.
DoSM said 45.2% of the survey respondents predicted their gross revenue would rise in Q2 2022 while 19.0% expected a reduction, leading to a net balance of +26.2%.
The rest of the respondents (35.8%) anticipated gross revenue to stagnate.
In the same quarter, 72.2% of the businesses expected their manpower to stay the same despite showing a net balance of +10.8%.
Of the businesses, 19.3% intended to hire more manpower in Q2 2022, while 8.5% planned a reduction.
On expectations of business performance for the upcoming six months (April to September 2022), Uzir said businesses also remained optimistic on their outlook with a net balance of +25.0%, up slightly from the +18.9% recorded previously.
This, he said, was attributed to better sentiments in the wholesale and retail trade, industry and services sectors. – Bernama, May 26, 2022
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