In a statement, the research house said that in the first 11 months of 2023, Malaysia’s distributive trade sales increased by 7.9% year-on-year (y-o-y), with retail trade rising 9.4%.

Other components of distributive trade also improved, including sales of motor vehicles (up 13% y-o-y) and wholesale trade (up 5.3% y-o-y).

“Consumer demand remained firm and resilient as reflected in the distributive trade sales performance.”

“Moving forward, the upbeat momentum of domestic demand is expected to continue in 2024 underpinned by a resilient labour market, stable inflationary pressure, pick-up in tourism activities, and supportive and accommodative economic policies,” MIDF said.

In November 2023, Malaysia’s distributive trade posted a growth of 6.2% y-o-y, the slowest expansion rate since July 2023.

On a month-on-month basis, non-seasonally-adjusted distributive trade inched up 0.2%.

By component, sales of motor vehicles continued its strong momentum with a 12.7% y-o-y growth, while wholesale trade rose by 6.2% and retail sales swelled by 4.4%.

In terms of seasonally-adjusted volume, distributive trade, retail trade and motor vehicles increased by 4.7%, 1% and 10.6% y-o-y, respectively.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate hit a new post-pandemic low of 3.3% in November 2023.

“Looking ahead, we foresee a sanguine domestic outlook for the fourth quarter of 2023 and 2024 amid better pick-up in tourism activities and supportive and accommodative economic policies from both fiscal and monetary sides,” MIDF said.