Monday 9 January 2017

CIMB. Lee Kok Kwan. Ringgit. Somehow

Is the 2015 hit for Dash Berlin and DJ 3LAU.

A CIMB director said today, the Ringgit is going to appreciate, but to how much, he decline to tell Bloomberg.

Syabas, Lee Kok Kwan, Your interview with Bloomberg, has convinced us, that somehow the Ringgit will appreciate, despite consensus from analysts, including those from CIMB, which says the Ringgit is going to be stuck at 4.52 to the US Dollar.

Bloomberg has the story. Read below :

Currency lost about 22% since start of 2015, worst in Asia

Funds may lock in foreign exchange gains before they evaporate

Malaysia’s ringgit is set to rebound from a 19-year low as official measures to boost demand for the currency kick in, according to a top banker and member of the central bank’s financial markets committee.

An appreciation of the ringgit can happen very quickly, said Lee Kok Kwan, who is also president of the Financial Markets Association of Malaysia and a director at lender CIMB Group Holdings Bhd. He pointed to three such periods of gains in the past 15 months including one when the currency surged as much as 7.4 percent in a space of a week.

“The ringgit is bottoming," Lee, who is part of the committee tasked to develop strategies for the nation’s bond and currency markets, said in an interview on Friday. "Malaysia’s fundamentals are steady and look decent. The trade and current account surpluses should improve just because imports will come off as the ringgit is weaker."

The ringgit has lost about 22 percent since the start of 2015 and is the worst-performing currency in emerging Asia, weighed down by the dollar’s strength and weak commodity prices. On Jan. 4, it breached 4.5 a dollar for the first time since 1998 as investors continued to sell down emerging-market assets and after a crackdown on currency speculators last month exacerbated outflows.

Lee’s prediction of a rebound contrasts with analysts in a Bloomberg survey, where the median is for the ringgit to trade at 4.52 against the dollar at the end of the first half, and for it to weaken to 4.57 by the end of 2017. 

Commodity Currencies

The ringgit, if benchmarked against commodity currencies such as the Australian and Canadian dollars, should be at about 3.90 a dollar, Lee said. The country is Asia’s only net oil exporter and world’s second biggest palm oil producer. He declined to provide the level the ringgit may strengthen to. It was around 4.4770 on Monday