Bank Muamalat Malaysia Bhd chief economist Afzanizam Rashid said that consensus estimates Malaysia’s inflation rate to be sustained at 1.5% in February.
Last week, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) revised its inflation rate forecast to 2.0-3.5% for 2024, from the previous forecast of 2.1-3.6%.
Despite the revision, Mohd Afzanizam said inflation remained high, giving more reasons for the Overnight Policy Rate to stay unchanged at 3%.
He said that based on the Fibonacci retracement, the ringgit’s prevailing support and resistance levels stand at RM4.7341 and RM4.47481, respectively.
At 9.05am, the ringgit eased to 4.7390/4.7430 against the greenback from Friday’s close of 4.7340/4.7390.
Meanwhile, the ringgit was traded mostly lower against a basket of major currencies.
It appreciated against the euro to 5.1195/5.1239 from 5.1203/5.1257 at Friday’s close but slipped against the British pound to 5.9692/5.9743 from 5.9582/5.9645 last week, and depreciated vis-a-vis the Japanese yen to 3.1332/3.1361 from 3.1223/3.1258.
The ringgit was also traded easier against other Asean currencies, except versus the Philippines’ peso, where it rose to 8.40/8.41 from 8.41/8.42 last Friday.
It slipped versus the Thai baht to 13.0336/13.0503 compared with 13.0116/13.0318, went down vis-a-vis the Indonesian rupiah to 300.2/300.6 from 299.8/300.4 and eased against the Singapore dollar to 3.5109/3.5141 from 3.5106/3.5145 previously.
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