Yesterday, the World Bank updated its database to include the new 2025 datapoints. The updates also redefined the institution’s income classifications.
The data shows what is expected: Malaysia has indeed made further progress towards attaining high income status. In fact, Malaysia is now the closest it has been to being reclassified upward. In 2025, Malaysia’s GNI per capita (Atlas method) was recorded at 86.1% of high income threshold, which represents 2.5-percentage point improvement from 2024 (83.6%). The last peak was in 2019 when the ratio was 85.8%.
Judging by events this year so far, despite challenges, I am willing to bet that the upward momentum will continue in 2026. Still, there is some ways to go and the more interesting question is, when would Malaysia graduate up?
The easiest—but not the most realistic—way to estimate that is to assume a straight line trajectory: at 2.5-percentage point ratio increase per year means Malaysia would need about 6 years to get there, i.e. 2031.
Yet, that straight line assumption unlikely to hold. Recent strong growth rates, wide inflation differentials between Malaysia and the world as well as an ever strengthening ringgit would not be easy to replicate over that period.
So, it would likely take longer than 6 years. If I were to give a target, the earliest is by the middle of the next decade. The latest, 2040.
Racing against others
Malaysia is not the only one moving up in the world. Several economies have overtaken Malaysia over the past decade or so and this could be understood by looking at Malaysia’s ranking. In 2025, Malaysia was the 88th richest economy based on GNI per capita (Atlas) calculation. In 2010, Malaysia was the 80th richest (out of 200+ economies). Eight economies have shot past Malaysia within that timeframe.
None of these economies is more impressive than China. If Malaysia is on the cusp of reclassification into high income category, then China’s fate feels inevitable with its ratio at 99% in 2025. China surpassed Malaysia’s GNI per capita in 2020 during the the heights of Covid-19 pandemic and the Malaysian political crisis. Malaysia has been playing catch-up ever since and has recently got its act together.
More progress in the neighborhood
But in the latest data release, Malaysia and China are not the stars of the year.
The stars are the Philippines and Vietnam. In 2025, both for the first time have been reclassified upward from lower-middle income to upper-middle income.
With the graduation of the two, that means there are only Cambodia, East Timor, Laos and Myanmar left in the lower-middle income group. Of these four, Cambodia is the next candidate for graduation. Myanmar, of course, is at war with itself.
That said, Indonesia could lose its status as an upper-middle income economy if the trouble there persists. The steep fall of the rupiah is something to watch out. Even so, the country’s 2025 ratio increased, which shows a kind of resilience the financial markets tend to ignore.
The crazy actually rich Asians
On the other side, Singapore and Brunei are obviously up there.
But Brunei is another economy to look out for. For some years now, the economy has been struggling. In my mind, its excessive reliance on petroleum production (which is declining), limited progress on economic diversification and the pegging of the Brunei dollar to the Singaporean dollar are the primary sources of their economic pain.
