Malaysian economy is expected to slow down in the fourth quarter, latest economic indicators showed Monday.

Malaysian Statistics Department said in a statement on Monday that the leading, coincident and lagging indices for June showed a better performance as compared to the previous month, but the moderate current trend anticipated that the economy would continue expanding at a slower pace between October and December.

According to the statement, the leading indicators (LI), which are designed to indicate the direction of economy for the next four to six months ahead, recorded an increase of 0.5 percent to 118.4 points in June, from 117.8 points in May.

Real imports of other basic precious and other non-ferrous metals (0.6 percent); number of new companies registered (0.5 percent) and expected sales value in manufacturing sector (0.4 percent) were the impetus to the growth of LI in the reference month.

The annual change of LI rose 0.3 percent in June as against negative 0.7 percent in May.

The coincident index (CI) which represents the current economic performance, also increased 1.2 percent in June when compared with May.

The growth was supported by the increases of volume index of retail trade (0.9 percent) and real contributions to Employees Provident Fund (0.2 percent).

The annual change of CI improved 3.1 percent in the reference month.

The level of diffusion index for LI reached 42.9 percent, which was better than 14.3 percent recorded in the previous month.

Meanwhile, the diffusion index for CI remained at 66.7 percent since the first month of 2018.