KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 28 — Malaysia is under no pressure to revise its interest rates as the financial system still sees positive growth in borrowings, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) Governor Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar Aziz said today.

The central bank chief said the country’s interest rates have been described as “accommodative”, which means that the financial system is supporting domestic economic activity.

“We are still seeing steady growth of credit. That means it has not hampered borrowing from the financial system to support businesses, especially for SMEs,” she said on the sidelines of a book launch here.

“This is experiencing quite rapid double-digit growth, which is good,” Zeti added.

Zeti repeated the central bank’s position that they are not keen on setting a peg on a ringgit - which traded at 4.4032 to the greenback at noon today - due to overall volatility in global markets.

She noted that while stability in the ringgit’s value is important, Malaysia cannot afford to set it at a specific value as markets around the world continue to experience fluctuations.

During the Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s, Malaysia pegged the ringgit against the US dollar to stop a free fall in the value of the Southeast Asian nation’s currency. The peg was removed in 2005.

“Of course we would like to see our currency stabilise rather than be volatile, because it’s very challenging for businesses and people who have exposure to currencies, who have children studying abroad, businesses abroad... it is a challenging environment.

“So of course we want to see our currency stabilise, but we do not have any particular level because this is not a static environment.

“This is a dynamic environment where other currencies are also adjusting, so we cannot keep ours at one specific level because it will be misaligned given the highly dynamic environment,” she said, adding that BNM is maintaining Malaysia’s 2015 growth forecast at between 4.5 and 5 per cent.