business community.
Healthy foreign exchange reserves and a relatively small external
debt make it unlikely that Malaysia will experience a crisis similar
to the one in 1997, but the economy remains vulnerable to a more
protracted slowdown in Japan and the US, top export destinations and
key sources of foreign investment. The Malaysian ringgit is pegged
to the dollar, and the Japanese central bank continues to intervene
and prop up the yen against the dollar.

GDP:
purchasing power parity - $207.8 billion (2003 est.)

GDP - real growth rate:
5.2% (2003 est.)

GDP - per capita:
purchasing power parity - $9,000 (2003 est.)

GDP - composition by sector:
agriculture: 7.3%
industry: 33.5%
services: 59.1% (2003 est.)

Investment (gross fixed):
22.2% of GDP (2003)

Population below poverty line:
8% (1998 est.)

Household income or consumption by percentage share:
lowest 10%: 1.4%
highest 10%: 39.2% (2003 est.)

Distribution of family income - Gini index:
49.2 (1997)

Inflation rate (consumer prices):
1.1% (2003 est.)

Labor force:
10.26 million (2003 est.)

Labor force - by occupation:
agriculture 14.5%, industry 36%, services 49.5% (2000 est.)

Unemployment rate:
3.6% (2003 est.)

Budget:
revenues: $22.95 billion
expenditures: $27.75 billion, including capital expenditures of $9.4
billion (2003 est.)

Public debt:
45.5% of GDP (2003)

Agriculture - products:
Peninsular Malaysia - rubber, palm oil, cocoa, rice; Sabah -
subsistence crops, rubber, timber, coconuts, rice; Sarawak - rubber,
pepper; timber

Industries:
Peninsular Malaysia - rubber and oil palm processing and
manufacturing, light manufacturing industry, electronics, tin mining
and smelting, logging and processing timber; Sabah - logging,
petroleum production; Sarawak - agriculture processing, petroleum
production and refining, logging

Industrial production growth rate:
9.3% (2003 est.)

Electricity - production:
75.33 billion kWh (2002)

Electricity - consumption:
68.4 billion kWh (2002)

Electricity - exports:
0 kWh (2002)

Electricity - imports:
0 kWh (2002)

Oil - production:
690,000 bbl/day (2003 est.)

Oil - consumption:
460,000 bbl/day (2003 est.)

Oil - exports:
230,200 bbl/day (2003)

Oil - imports:
NA (2003)

Oil - proved reserves:
3.729 billion bbl (1 January 2002)

Natural gas - production:
53.66 billion