Updated on January 23, 2015
Malaysia is a highly open upper-middle income economy. Malaysia was one of 13 countries identified by the Commission on Growth and Development in its 2008 Growth Report to have recorded average growth of more than 7 percent per year for 25 years or more. Economic growth was inclusive, as Malaysia also succeeded in nearly eradicating poverty: the share of households living below the national poverty line (USD 8.50 per day in 2012) fell from over 50 percent in the 1960s to less than 1.0 percent currently.
||USD 312.5 billion
|GDP per capita
||USD 10,500 (2013)
||83 percent (2013)
|Doing Business 2015 Ranking
||18th (out of 189
|Poverty Rate (share of households
below the national poverty line)
|1.0 percent (2014)
|Gini coefficient (income)
||2.7 percent (October
Being a producer of raw materials, such as tin and rubber, in the 1970s, Malaysia now has a diversified economy and has become a leading exporter of electrical appliances, electronic parts and components, palm oil, and natural gas. After the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998, Malaysia continued to post solid growth rates, averaging 5.5 percent per year from 2000-2008. Malaysia was hit by the Global Financial Crisis in 2009 but recovered rapidly, posting growth rates averaging 5.7 percent since 2010.
Growth was accompanied by a dramatic reduction in poverty from 49.3 percent in 1970 to 1.0 percent in 2014. However, pockets of poverty exist and income inequality remains high relative to the developed countries Malaysia aspires to emulate: the Gini coefficient of income inequality stood at 0.41 in Malaysia in 2014, compared with 0.31 and 0.33 in the Republic of Korea and Japan (both as of 2010), for example. Real income of the bottom 40 percent of households increased by an average 6.3 percent per year between 2009 and 2012, compared to 5.2 percent for the average household, suggesting the benefits from growth were being shared.
The sustainability of Malaysia’s near-term economic outlook over the medium-term hinges on the implementation of structural reforms to boost capabilities and competition within the economy, along with the economic developments in Malaysia’s export markets and trends in global oil and gas markets. The accelerated implementation of productivity-enhancing reforms to increase the quality of human capital and create more competition in the economy will be key for Malaysia secure a lasting place among the ranks of high-income economies. Malaysia has been working to address these challenges. In 2010, Malaysia launched the New Economic Model (NEM), which aims for the country to reach high income status by 2020 while ensuring that growth is also sustainable and inclusive. The NEM includes a number of reforms to achieve economic growth that is primarily driven by the private sector and moves the Malaysian economy into higher value-added activities in both industry and services.