KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 14 – Bank Negara Malaysia’s Governor Tan Sri Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz said the Malaysian economy is expected to be remain on its growth path of between 4.5-5.5 per cent on this year which supported by the government’s flexible policy.
“There would be continuous announcements regarding the economy in order to ensure that it remained remained on its growth path. Also, it is important to highlight that Malaysia is not a country that is over-dependent monetary policies to boost growth,” she told a media briefing on the third quarter gross domestic product performance here on Friday.
“We rely on a broad spectrum of policy measures to support growth and this is important because when you are over-reliance on interest rate to support growth, this can result in other excesses emerging and financial imbalances building up. Therefore, BNM has been also maintaining an accommodative policy by maintaining the interest rate at 3.25 per cent currently,” she said.
“There are other measures like special funds and other tax measures that had been introduced to support consumption and investment activities and other small and medium enterprise programmes to support development. All these will contribute to sustaining the growth. For the first three quarters, it is already five per cent growth actually,” she said.
“On the Finance Ministry’s projection of next year’s current account surplus to be more than half to RM11.3 billion, BNM would not be concerned even if the trade turned to deficit. As long as it remains in surplus. Although some quarters may be negative, fundamentally, for the whole year, we are expected to remain in surplus. We have a council to strengthen exports and defer projects which have high import contents. This was important for maintaining the surplus in the current account,” she added.
