KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 6- Improved economic conditions and rising business confidence following the surge in infrastructure spending and the recent general election have lifted Malaysia’s economy in the second quarter, a survey reveals.
Malaysia also saw improvement investment opportunities while cashflow pressures eased, the latest Global Economic Conditions Survey (GECS) showed.
“Malaysia is echoing that confidence boost and seeing good conditions, thus recovery is seen as substantially more robust,” Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCAs) Senior Economic Analyst and GECS Editor Emmanouil Schizas said in a statement.
In the second quarter, 37 per cent of businesses (up from 32 per cent) reported confidence gains, the survey showed.
Malaysia ACCA Head Jennifer Lopez said that as demand and cashflow pressures fell in Malaysia, businesses saw greater capacity building.
She said much of the capacity growth was fuelled by government spending.
On a global scale, the GECS found both business confidence and optimism on the economy continuing to rise in the second quarter of this year, with nearly half of the GECs (47 per cent) feeling that the state of the economy was improving.
This is the highest level of optimism on the national and global economies in two years and the strongest year-on-year improvement in three years.
The 18th edition of the GECS had 1,833 responses in the second quarter of this year from ACCA and institute of Management Accountant members around the world, including 172 from chief financial officers.
– BERNAMA
