BMI sees Malaysia's consumer spending to remain robust
KUALA LUMPUR, April 28 (Xinhua) -- The BMI Country Risk and Industry Research has maintained its view that Malaysia will experience further strong growth in consumer spending in 2025.
The research house said in a note last Friday that this stable growth outlook is underpinned by a low inflationary environment and a stable labor market.
"Our outlook envisages a steady uptick in spending over the forecast period to 2029 due to solid household incomes and tourism-related retail sales," it noted.
However, it pointed out that downside risks remain, as high debt levels leave Malaysian households vulnerable to elevated interest rates, requiring consumers to allocate more of their budgets to debt repayments for longer and constraining their ability to spend on other goods and services.
Overall, BMI forecasts household spending to grow by 5.2 percent year-on-year over 2025, in real terms, to a value of 943.7 billion ringgit (215.6 billion U.S. dollars), up from 896.9 billion ringgit in 2024.
As a result, Malaysia's household spending has returned to pre-Covid levels of growth, where it grew at a real average rate of 5.2 percent year-on-year during the 2015-2019 period. (1 ringgit equals 0.23 U.S dollars).
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