Malaysia GDP outlook brightening: OCBC

Newly released February data impresses and warranted an upward revision to 4.4% from 3.8% yoy GDP growth.

Export and imports are growing at mid-to-high double-digits at 14.5% and 18% yoy, respectively, which far exceeded expectations and helped paint a rosier economic scenario for the country moving forward.

Here's more from OCBC:

The February data released earlier this week came in well above our expectations and even if the significant jump in annual growth figures were partly caused by the holiday distortions, the average sequential growth for January-February suggests that the situation in Malaysia is not as dire as we had previously thought. Export and import growth jumped to 14.5% yoy and 18.0% yoy respectively from 0.4% and 3.3% previously, while IPI growth came in at 7.5% yoy for the month.

It is also important to highlight that our estimated 8.5% mom seasonally adjusted growth in IPI is at its multi-year high, suggesting a strong pick up in external shipments. We gather a couple of interesting insights to the data, which have prompted us to revise our outlook on the Malaysian economy, which is now likely to grow by 4.2% yoy in 2012, above our initial forecast of 3.8% yoy growth.