PUTRAJAYA: Malaysia's economy is on expansion mode, with high-value investments coming to the country in the third quarter of this year, said Statistics Department's Chief Statistician Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin.

"The momentum usually takes time to change direction. Right now it is on expansion trend and our leading indicators also showed it," he told the media after attending the Economic Statistics Second Quarter 2017 briefing here today.

Mohd Uzir said Malaysia still has good potentials to grow as merchandise trade was worth RM100.4 trillion yearly.

"In that sense, if we look at the third quarter, there are high-value investments coming in to invest in Bursa Malaysia and the property sector," he said.

On the magnitude of the expansion, Mohd Uzir said, this would depend on Ministry of Finance to come out with its own forecast.

"Within two weeks' time, Department of Statistics will produce one of the important statistics, which is our export numbers for July to see whether the country can maintain the growth or not," he said.

Meanwhile, he said, the department has made progress to produce the Quarterly Survey of Services on a monthly basis which would be ready in one to two years' time.

"We will also put in efforts to produce gross domestic product (GDP) based on income approach as practised by certain develop countries, compared to our current GDP, which is value-added- and expenditure- based," he said.

He said to produce the GDP based on income approach, the department needed to know the statistics, including on the employment, salary, profit, and breakdown of the value-added of the components.

"It is hard to get from normal data collection and very difficult ... hence we still need time," he said. -- Bernama