Household appliances in Malaysia have been getting cheaper for three years, but DOSM's price measure for the services around them, repair, installation and hire combined, has not. In the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) Consumer Price Index, the class for major household appliances, which covers kitchen and laundry machines, air conditioners and heaters, is 1.7 per cent lower in September 2026 than in September 2023. Small household appliances are 2.2 per cent lower. Over the same three years, the class DOSM labels "repair, installation and hire of household appliances" rose 4.3 per cent.
Measured each September, the two appliance classes were lower than the year before in every one of the three years, and the repair, installation and hire class was higher than the year before in every one of them. We used the same two months, September 2023 and September 2026, for every figure in this comparison.
The three classes, side by side
These are the three classes that make up DOSM's "household appliances" group (053). The index is set to 100 for the 2010 average. The change column is measured between the two September readings, not against the base of 100.
| DOSM class | Index Sep 2023 | Index Sep 2024 | Index Sep 2025 | Index Sep 2026 | Change, Sep 2023 to Sep 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0531 Major household appliances, whether electric or not | 113.5 | 113.4 | 112.8 | 111.6 | -1.7% |
| 0532 Small household appliances | 126.0 | 125.9 | 124.4 | 123.2 | -2.2% |
| 0533 Repair, installation and hire of household appliances | 117.5 | 119.0 | 120.3 | 122.6 | +4.3% |
| Overall CPI, all items (for reference) | 130.8 | 133.2 | 135.2 | 137.6 | +5.2% |
Inside the major-appliances class, the subclass for major kitchen appliances fell 3.0 per cent over the same window, major laundry appliances fell 0.9 per cent, and heaters and air conditioners ended exactly where they started (107.5 in both Septembers). Inside the small-appliances class, small appliances for cooking and processing food fell 5.1 per cent. DOSM's newer "cleaning equipment" subclass has no September 2023 reading, so we leave it out rather than compare it over a shorter window.
What this does and does not say
The repair, installation and hire class did not outrun prices in general. Malaysia's overall consumer price index rose 5.2 per cent over the same three years, a little more than the 4.3 per cent for appliance repair, installation and hire. So the finding is the split between the two sides of the same group: the index for the appliances themselves went down, while the combined index for repairing, installing and hiring them went up, by 4.3 per cent against 5.2 per cent for all items.
The longer view looks different, and we show it so the three-year split is not read as a sixteen-year one. From September 2010 to September 2026, major household appliances rose 11.8 per cent, small household appliances rose 24.7 per cent, and repair, installation and hire rose 23.1 per cent, all well below the 37.1 per cent rise in overall consumer prices. Over that long window, small appliances rose slightly faster than the repair class, so the reversal is recent: it shows in the September readings from 2023 onwards.
These are index numbers, not ringgit prices. The index tracks the price of a basket over time; it does not tell you what any single repair, installation or appliance costs. The 0533 class bundles three things under one DOSM label, repair, installation and hire, and the published series does not split them, so every figure we quote for it is for the three combined: we cannot say whether repair, installation or hire on its own rose, or which moved most. DOSM also updated the CPI basket, weights and classification from the January 2024 release; its indices are chained so the series stays continuous, but the comparison window crosses that change. The figures are national averages. We do not claim a cause for either direction; the series show what moved and by how much, not why.
How to reproduce this
Download cpi_4d.parquet from DOSM (storage.dosm.gov.my/cpi/cpi_4d.parquet, the consumer price index by 4-digit class). Read the index for classes 0531, 0532 and 0533 at 2023-09-01, 2024-09-01, 2025-09-01 and 2026-09-01, and take the change between the first and last. For the overall index, use the "overall" row of storage.dosm.gov.my/cpi/cpi_2d.parquet at the same dates. The subclass figures come from cpi_5d.parquet in the same folder, and the class and subclass labels are DOSM's own, from storage.dosm.gov.my/dictionaries/mcoicop.parquet. September 2026 is the latest month published.
