KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's industrial production in July rose 0.5 percent from a year earlier, much slower than June's output growth of 7.0 percent, data from the Statistics Department showed on Thursday, and was below expectations.

A Reuters poll of 11 economists had forecast factory output would expand at 4.3 percent in July due to a large drop in exports for the same month, especially to main markets, China and Japan.

The data showed that while manufacturing output recorded slower growth, the mining sector saw a decrease of 7.8 percent.