KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 17 — The ringgit touched the strongest level in a month after a report showed lending in China, Malaysia’s biggest trading partner, surged to a record.

The Southeast Asian nation’s benchmark stock index rose the most in a week today after China said February 15 that aggregate financing, the broadest measure of credit, rose to 2.58 trillion yuan in January, surpassing the previous high of 2.54 trillion yuan in the same month in 2013.

Malaysia’s fourth- quarter economic growth accelerated to 5.1 per cent from 5 per cent in the preceding three months, according to official data released last week.

The ringgit gained 0.3 per cent to 3.2962 per dollar as of 9:18am in Kuala Lumpur, according to prices compiled by Bloomberg. It reached 3.2895 earlier, the strongest level since January 17. The currency rallied 0.7 per cent last week, paring its loss this year to 0.6 per cent.

“Asian currencies are stronger because of the improving sentiment in China,” said Wong Chee Seng, a currency strategist at AmBank Group in Kuala Lumpur. “This will be a perfect week for the ringgit as investors are also digesting the good flow of macro-economic data in the nation.”

The Malaysian government’s budget shortfall narrowed to 3.9 per cent of gross domestic product last year from 4.5 per cent in 2012, according to the central bank’s quarterly bulletin released last week. The current-account surplus widened to RM16.2 billion in the last three months of 2013 from RM9.8 billion in the previous period, a report showed last week.

One-month implied volatility in the ringgit, a measure of expected moves in the exchange rate used to price options, fell nine basis points, or 0.09 percentage point, to 6.56 per cent.

Ten-year government bonds advanced. The yield on the 4.181 per cent notes due July 2024 declined one basis point to 4.11 per cent, the lowest since the debt was sold in January, data compiled by Bloomberg show. —Bloomberg