KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 28 — Malaysia will need to actively reach out to the global market and convince investors that it remains a viable profit centre, Bank Negara Malaysia’s (BNM) governor said today after credit-default-swaps traders slapped a "junk status" assessment on the country last week.

Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar Aziz said the country will need to revisit its own playbook from the 1998 Asian Financial Crisis and engage with investors directly as a means to counter the negative press.

"During the Asian Financial Crisis, all sorts of things were said about Malaysia. But in 1999, less than a year after the crisis, we went to tell the world our story," she told reporters on the sidelines of a book launch here.

"It's up to us to tell our story to the market, just like we did before... so this is what we must do, so investors will look at how we assess our situation and they can make their assessment then," Zeti added.

Last week, financial news agency Bloomberg cited data from ratings agencies Moody’s, when reporting that credit default swaps traders view six developing nations including Malaysia as deserving to follow Brazil’s downgrade to “junk status”.

Moody’s had last week graded Malaysia at A3, but traders saw it six levels lower at Ba3, faring slightly worse than Peru in the eyes of the traders which gave that country a Ba2 grade.

The traders see Malaysia as one notch better than South Africa at B1, and also faring better than Bahrain, Turkey, Kazakhstan at B2.

Moody’s data classifies Ba1 to B3 as the junk category.

In response to the Bloomberg report, CIMB Group chairman Datuk Seri Nazir Razak took to photo-sharing site Instagram to say that the traders’ view belied the country’s actual situation and fundamentals’ strength.