PETALING JAYA: Labour productivity in Malaysia went up 3.6% in 2017, according to the Statistics Department.

In a statement, the Statistics Department said that the country’s labour productivity value rose to RM81,039 in 2017 from RM78,244 a year earlier.

In 2016, Malaysia’s productivity was up by 3.5%.

The mining and quarrying sector recorded the strongest growth of productivity in 2017 at 6.3%, followed by services (4.7%), manufacturing (4.2%), construction (2.2%) and agriculture (1.5%).

As a result of the expansion of value added by 5.9%, the country’s overall employment has improved by 2.2%, as compared to only 0.7% in 2016.

In a separate press release, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry has commended the country’s strong labour productivity growth last year.

“This is a continuous improvement following the growth of 3.5% in labour productivity recorded in 2016. In the period of 2010-2016, our labour productivity grew by an average of 2.2%. The 11th Malaysia Plan (2016-2020) has set a target of 3.7% labour productivity growth. To date, Malaysia has achieved 87.8% of the targeted level of RM92,300 labour productivity by 2020,” it said.

The ministry also added that the growth in Malaysia’s gross domestic product in the period of 2014-2017 has been increasingly driven by the growth in labour productivity, rather than the increase in employment.

“On average, labour productivity grew by 3.5% while employment increased by 1.5% in the last four years.

“We could expect continuous improvement in labour productivity, especially with the implementation of the Malaysian Productivity Blueprint last year which aims to shift our approach to productivity from the primarily Government-driven initiatives at the national level to targeted action across the public sector, industry players and individual enterprises,” it said.

As for the fourth quarter of 2017, the pace of Malaysia’s labour productivity growth slowed to 3.6% and was valued at about RM85,031. In comparison, labour productivity grew stronger by 4.1% in the preceding third quarter.

According to the Statistics Department, the agriculture sector recorded the strongest growth in the quarter in review.

“The agriculture sector registered labour productivity growth of 4.8% while labour productivity for the mining and quarrying sector turned around to 4.7% from declining by 8.5% in the previous quarter.

“The manufacturing sector’s labour productivity increased by 3.6% and the construction sector recorded labour productivity growth of 1.4%,” it said.

As for the services sector, labour productivity improved by 4.7%.