KUALA LUMPUR, June 3 — The ringgit ended the week marginally higher against the US dollar after the greenback retreated in light of the slightly lower United States (US) Treasury yields, an analyst said.
At 6pm, the local currency inched higher to 4.3870/3910 versus the US dollar from yesterday’s close of 4.3880/3910.
OANDA Asia Pacific senior market analyst Jeffrey Halley said the US dollar staged a broad retreat, undoing all of its gains from the day before as investors were in a cautious mood ahead of the release of the jobs data today.
“Asian markets look content to watch from the sidelines pending the release of the US data on Friday and over the weekend. Their fate will be decided by today’s US Non-Farm Payrolls data,” he told Bernama.
On the home front, the Department of Statistics Malaysia reported that Malaysia’s export prices in April 2022 remained steady, with an increase of 1.1 per cent month-on-month (m-o-m) to 143.0 points from 141.5 points in March 2022.
The import unit value index also registered an increase of 2.4 per cent m-o-m to 129.0 points, outpacing the export unit value index, resulting in a 1.4 per cent drop in Malaysia’s terms of trade.
Meanwhile, the ringgit was traded mostly lower against a basket of major currencies.
The local note depreciated against the Singapore dollar to 3.1947/1981 from Thursday’s close of 3.1901/1928 and was traded lower versus the British pound at 5.5171/5221 compared with 5.5034/5072 yesterday.
It had also dropped versus the euro to 4.7143/7186 from 4.6895/6927 on Thursday but increased vis-a-vis the Japanese yen to 3.3728/3759 from 3.3803/3829 previously.
— Bernama
