Ringgit rises with major currencies

Published: 2009/09/12

RINGGIT

THE ringgit ended firm yesterday, extending gains seen the last five consecutive days, in line with other major currencies, a dealer said.

He said major currencies strengthened against the dollar on optimism that the economy was recovering and this attracted traders to buy riskier and growth-linked currencies.

At 5pm, the local unit stood at 3.4930/4965, higher from Thursday's 3.4980/5030.

" The dollar is in the sell-off mode across the board and is expected to decline further in the near-term," he said.

Throughout the day, the local unit moved within the range of 3.4885 and 3.4980 against the dollar, but was however lower against other major currencies.

It was lower against the Singapore dollar at 2.4552/4585 from 2.4516/4586 yesterday and the Japanese yen at 3.8423/8482 from 3.7956/8022.

The local unit eased against the British pound to 5.8347/8409 from 5.7755/7859 on Thursday and against the euro to 5.0935/1007 from 5.0896/0986 previously.


INTERBANK RATES

SHORT-term rates remained stable yesterday as Bank Negara Malaysia continued to intervene to offset liquidity surplus in the financial system, a dealer said.

The overnight rate was unchanged at Thursday's 1.91 per cent while the one-week, two-week and three-week rates remained at 1.94 per cent, 1.96 per cent and 1.99 per cent respectively.

Yesterday morning, Bank Negara estimated a surplus of RM20.9 billion in conventional operations and RM4.99 billion in the Islamic system, and issued three conventional tenders, an Al-Wadiah tender, a repo tender and a commodity Mudarabah programme tender.

Liquidity surplus in the system then decreased to RM12.12 billion in the conventional system and RM5.86 billion in Islamic funds.

Following this, the central bank carried out a late conventional tender for RM12.1 billion of three-day money and an Al-Wadiah tender for RM5.8 billion also of three-day money.


KLIBOR

THE three-month Kuala Lumpur Interbank Offered Rate (KLIBOR) futures contract on Bursa Malaysia Derivatives ended yesterday untraded, dealers said.

September 2009, October 2009, November 2009 and December 2009 contracts remained pegged at 97.86, 97.82, 97.81 and 97.81 respectively.

The underlying rate was quoted at 2.14 per cent.

Meanwhile, the five-year Malaysian Government Securities futures was also untraded. - Bernama