Lelo Nxumalo

Below is a motion chart of Malaysia's 13 states. Feel free to play around with the chart. The default visual shows that as of 2010, the largest contributor to national GDP (expressed in million ringgit) was Selangor, and the least was Perlis. On a per capita basis, however, Kuala Lumpur led while Kelantan had the lowest. The default colors show the female labor force participation rate with blue representing the lowest, and red the highest as shown in the top right. At 56.2% Pinang had the highest female labor force participation rate, while Perlis had the least (34.8%). Sabah had the highest unemployment rate (5.5%), while Melaka had the lowest (1%). There is generally a positive relationship between the share of the labor force with a tertiary degree and per capita incomes. In KL, the share of the labor force with tertiary education was 36.1% and per capita incomes were RM62,075 while only 14.1% of Sabah's labor force had a tertiary degree and per capita incomes averaging le...

The R-generated motion chart below is a representation of East Asian economies as of 2013. The data used are from the World Bank's WDI database. Bubble size represents the relative size of the country's GDP (measured in 2011 PPP dollars). The default colors show the rate of growth with red standing for the the fastest growing.

Below is a time chart of Malaysia's stock market index, the KLCI. The annotation shows that the lowest point was on September 1st 1998, in the depth of the Asian Financial Crisis. In a later post I will add other indexes in the region to compare relative performance of Malaysia in light of increasing global uncertainty driven by a weak China, strong dollar, and the commodity price slump. But the purpose of this is to challenge calls for extraordinary policy action by the central bank (BNM) such as to reinstate capital controls to limit draw-downs by foreign investors in the Malaysian stock market to slow the ringgit's depreciation. Data source: Yahoo Finance. Note: The FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI Index comprises of the largest 30 companies by full market capitalization on Bursa Malaysia's Main Board. When launched, on July 6, 2009 it replaced the Bursa Malaysia KLCI Index starting at the closing value of the KLCI Index on July 3 2009, also inheriting th...