KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 11 — Short-term rates are likely to remain stable next week on Bank Negara Malaysia’s (BNM) intervention in the money market to absorb excess funds, dealers said.
They said they do not anticipate the central bank to amend the overnight policy rate in the near term as the US Federal Reserve recently hinted low interest rates would stay for some time.
“Less inflationary threat for the short term is seen as September’s consumer price index (CPI) due next week is expected to dip to around 2.4 per cent as a result of the higher base stemming from the cutback in petrol subsidy last September,” he told Bernama.
For next week, BNM is expected to continue to call for several money market tenders comprising conventional and Islamic, including commodity murabahah programme, range maturity auctions and repo tenders, on a daily basis.
For the week just ended, BNM intervened daily to flush the system of surplus. The liquidity surplus in the conventional system amounted to RM18.18 billion while the excess in the Islamic system stood at RM3.36 billion.
The overnight Islamic reference rate was unchanged at 3.21 per cent, while the one-, two- and three-week rates stood at 3.27 per cent, 3.31 per cent and 3.34 per cent, respectively.
On a week-to-week basis, the benchmark three-month KLIBOR inched up to 3.75 per cent from last week’s 3.74 per cent. — Bernama
