KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia main ports will grow moderately in 2015, on the back of continuing economic expansion and a good trade performance. Gross tonnage and container volume growth will pick up as both exports and imports continue to grow, despite a slight easing of domestic consumption.
Port Klang and Port Tanjung Pelepas will also benefit from expansion projects and developments over the last two years. Tonnage growth at both will lag slightly behind GDP, with box traffic growth leading GDP and, in the case of Port Klang, exceeding 7%.
The Malaysian economy surged ahead in 2014, driven forward by strong export demand and dynamic domestic consumption. Although we remain positive in our outlook for 2015, we believe one of those two engines of expansion – the domestic consumer market – is going to lose some of its vigour. GDP grew by 6.2% in Q114 and by 6.4% in Q214, persuading us to raise out estimate for full calendar 2014 growth to 5.8% (up from 4.5% previously). Our forecast for 2015 is that growth will ease back to a slower, but still impressive 4.2%.
