Statistics, or an efficient way to lie

Mum and Dad sent me this link. It's pre-election season in Malaysia (elections to be held some time in March 2008), and the Second Finance Minister - the First Finance Minister is the Prime Minister - claims that "the country’s per capita income had risen by 40% between 2004 and 2007, from RM15,819 (US$4,163) to RM22,345 (US$6,452)". He also said that the "the average economic growth from 2004 to 2007 was 5.9%, compared to 5.1% from 2000 to 2003".

This claim is clearly ridiculous. And here's why.

• First and foremost, the 40% increase is correct if you take his numbers at face value. At least they haven't lied that blatantly.
• If he means GDP per capita, then by his own growth numbers he's talking rubbish. He would need GDP to grow at least 12% per annum and the population to remain static to actually hit his 2007 income number. Maybe the population has fallen - anyone who can leave is leaving...
• If he means actual wage income per capita, then to achieve that level of wage income growth, on his inflation numbers (supposedly 2.5% a year), wages grew by close to 10% in real terms. Some googling around and messing about on some investment bank research websites turned up a more likely range of between 3-5% real wage growth.
• Add that range to the real inflation number (I believe it's somewhere between 3-6%, personally), and you get a nominal wage income growth rate of between 6-11% - surprise surprise, his number isn't completely outside the realms of possibility. But only if you have far higher inflation than the Malaysian government will admit.
  

Of course, the proper way to check would be to tally up the wage component of GDP and divide it by the number of workers. But Malaysia's official statistics are probably fairly unreliable anyway. Plus, you have to pay for them. It's only RM25, but there's no point throwing money away.

More at Tony Pua's blog. He calculates how much the Malaysian population must have shrunk to get to the GDP per capita growth rate of 12% - about 16%. That's a big brain drain.

Update 13 February 2008: He did mean GDP per capita! US$6,452*25m people = US$161bn. This is on the same order as Malaysia's GDP in USD at current exchange rates - around US$170bn. This could mean 2 things - (a) he's too stupid to lie convincingly, or (b) he's got such contempt for the electorate that he can't be bothered to lie convincingly. Or possibly, both.