The country's manufacturing sales in September grew 10.9 percent year-on-year, its fastest pace in six months, to breach the RM30 billion mark for the first time in three years, economists said today.

According to preliminary figures released by the Statistics Department, September's sales hit RM30.51 billion and was up five percent from August. For the first nine months of the year, manufacturing sales rose 9.6 percent to RM250.32 billion.

"The sector's performance was rather exemplary as double digit growth in manufacturing output of 12.2 percent year-on-year in September almost tallied with the 10.90 percent hike in sales, which is the fastest pace since March," said Azrul Azwar, economist with MIDF Sisma Securities.

"What's more heartening is the fact that the sales value breached the RM30 billion mark for the first time since September 2000."

Strong outlook

Much of the growth was driven by domestic demand as Malaysia's exports have still not recovered from a slump in the previous months, he told AFP .

According to preliminary figures last month, manufacturing sales in August rose 3.6 percent from a year earlier to RM28.38 billion but fell 0.1 percent from July.

New Prime Minister and Finance Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi last week said Malaysia's economic outlook remained strong and predicted growth of 5.5 to six percent for 2004, up from 4.5 percent expected this year. - AFP