Taps in the Economy

How do you make a layman understand what brings cash into the Malaysian economy?

A simple analogy is through the taps scenario.
So how many taps are there that flows in cash into the Malaysian economy?

Off my head, these are the ones.

Manufacturing
Construction/Housing
Tourism/Hotels
Plantation and Commodities
Tertiary Services
Others

What are the main elements of manufacturing? The bulk of it is Electrical and Electronics in the free trade zones in the form of semiconductors. The others could range from textiles to automobiles assembly, furniture to component manufacturing.

Construction and housing refers mainly to highway construction,civil works for the government and the private sectors and housing projects.

Tourism are for inbound, air transportation,hotel accommodation,restaurants, tourist destinations and theme parks.

Plantation and commodities refers to oil palm, rubber, timber, pepper, minerals and crude oil and gas.

Tertiary services include transportation, banking, shipping,and insurance.

Others will include health services, health tourism and education.

So how did Malaysia fare in the first quarter of 2009?

Every tap gave less cash except for construction which added 0.5% more. Manufacturing took a beating losing 17 sen to a ringgit. All the rest were negative in contribution.

The jury came in with a minus 6.6% contraction.

So what about Q2?

So say we will still be swimming in red ink but may be not as great a volume as in Q1.

So let us wait for late July or early August for the figures to show.