Ringgit surges in tandem with firmer KL bourse

RINGGIT

THE ringgit closed higher against the US dollar yesterday in line with the firmer local bourse, dealers said.

They said the FTSE Bursa Malaysia Kuala Lumpur Composite Index rose by 4.36 points at close to 1,210.61 after opening 0.19 point lower at 1,206.06.

At the close, the ringgit rose to 3.4600/4630 against the US dollar compared

with 3.4770/4810 last Friday.

Dealers said the uptrend was also in tandem with the performance of other regional currencies, such as the rupiah, Singapore dollar and Philippines peso.

The greenback eased against other major currencies.

Against other major currencies, the ringgit was mostly higher.

It rose against the Singapore dollar to 2.4497/4561 from 2.4536/4599 last Friday, increased against the yen to 3.8503/8564 from 3.8897/8955 previously and rose against the euro at 5.0583/0651 from 5.0590/0659.

It, however, eased against the British pound at 5.5300/5385 from 5.5288/5369 last week.

INTERBANK RATES

SHORT-TERM rates remained steady at close yesterday as Bank Negara Malaysia continued to intervene to offset the liquidity surplus in the financial system, dealers said.

The liquidity surplus was reduced to RM20.50 billion in the conventional system and RM8.62 billion in Islamic funds.

The central bank had this morning estimated a surplus of RM31.94 billion in the conventional system and RM13.96 billion in the Islamic system.

To reduce the surplus, Bank Negara issued two late tenders comprising a conventional tender for RM20.5 billion of one-day money and an Al-Wadiah tender for RM8.6 billion of one-day money.

KLIBOR

THE three-month Kuala Lumpur Interbank Offered Rate (KLIBOR) futures contracts on Bursa Malaysia Derivatives closed untraded yesterday due to a lack of interest, dealers said. At close, all contracts remained at last Friday's settlement prices, with October 2009, November 2009, December 2009, March 2010 and June 2010 at 97.87, 97.86, 97.86, 97.69 and 97.44 respectively.

Meanwhile, there were also no transactions for the five-year Malaysian Government Securities with the December 2009 contract staying at last Friday's settlement price of 109.9.

At 11am, the underlying three-month KLIBOR was fixed at 2.15 per cent. - Bernama