Wednesday 23 November 2016

Bank Negara Malaysia. No Diggity

Is the 1996 hit by Dr Dre & Blackstreet, which dislodged Macarena on the charts after 14 weeks at number one on the billboard charts.

Bank Negara kept interest unchanged today, and now one expert says, nothing is going to happen in 2017.

Read Below :

Capital Economics Analyst Krystal Tan wrote:

There are fears that Donald Trump’s reflationary policies could lead to a rise in US inflation and trigger the Fed to hike interest rates aggressively, leading to a pull-back of capital flows from emerging markets. The need to roll-over Malaysia’s large stock of short term external debt (which is the equivalent to around 28% of GDP) makes the ringgit vulnerable during periods of global risk aversion. Malaysia’s relatively high level of foreign currency debt, estimated at close to 40% of GDP, means it won’t want to risk sharp falls in the ringgit.

The tone of today’s statement suggests that the central bank is in little hurry to adjust monetary policy settings any time soon, and there was no mention of the possible introduction of capital controls which had recently been mooted in the press. With inflation set to remain low, we expect interest rates in Malaysia to remain on hold through 2017.