KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 31 — 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.
A dealer said she does not anticipate the central bank to amend the overnight policy rate in the very near term despite the Monetary Authority of Singapore's move to ease its monetary stance on Wednesday while the US Federal
Reserve hinted that it would stay the course towards increasing rates.
For next week, she said 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, the BNM intervened daily to flush the system of surplus.
Yesterday, the liquidity surplus in the conventional system amounted to RM17.58 billion while the excess in the Islamic system stood at RM8.45 billion.
Following this, the central bank issued a late conventional tender for RM17.60 billion and a late Al-Wadiah tender for RM6.60 billion, both for five-day money.
On a week-to-week basis, the benchmark three-month Klibor inched down to 3.85 per cent from last week's 3.86 per cent.
Meanwhile, the overnight Islamic reference rate stood at 3.22 per cent, while the one-, two- and three-week rates stood at 3.28 per cent, 3.32 per cent and 3.36 per cent, respectively.
The market will be closed on Monday and Tuesday for Federal Territory Day (replacement) and Thaipusam holidays. — Bernama
