Materia Medica Malaysiana

Lower Fertility, Higher Death Rate Among Malaysian Indians

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 12 (Bernama) -- A lower fertility rate and higher death rate among Malaysian Indians in comparison with the Bumiputeras resulted in them falling 0.1 per cent to 7.6 per cent of the population between Census 2000 and this year, according to the Malaysian Statistics Department.
In absolute numbers, however, Malaysian Indians increased from 1.696 million to 1.807 million in the same period.
Works Minister and MIC president Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu recently questioned the "7.5 per cent" Indian composition in the population and asked how the Statistics Department arrived at the figure.
He said he had "checked the whole of Sungai Siput (his parliamentary constituency). Nobody went there to do a survey".
In establishing the size of the population, the Statistics Department said it undertook the Population and Housing Census once every 10 years. In between, estimates were used.
In Census 2000, the department used the "de jure" concept where the population including foreigners were counted according to their ordinary residence in Malaysia during the census day while the "de facto" approach which was used in previous censuses counted the number of the population according to where they were on census day.
The total population of Malaysia is estimated at 25.581 million this year compared to 25.048 million last year and 22.082 million during the 2000 census. From the total, 1.694 million are non-citizens this year, against 1.624 million in 2003 and 1.413 million in 2000.
Compared to the growth rate of the Bumiputera population at 2.3 per cent in the 2001-2004 period, the growth rate of the Indian population rose 1.6 per cent in the corresponding period.