Julia Goh, Senior Economist, and Loke Siew Ting, UOB Group Economist, evaluate the latest results of foreign exchange reserves and the foreign portfolio of Malaysia.
“Foreigners bought more MYR-denominated debt securities in the first month of the year (Jan 2023: +MYR0.5bn, Dec 2022: -MYR0.9bn) mainly concentrated in government bonds. However, foreigners remained net sellers of equities for the fifth consecutive month, albeit to a lesser extent (Jan 2023: MYR -300m, Dec 2022: -MYR 1.4bn) Overall, foreigners became net buyers of portfolio instruments Malaysians for a marginal amount of MYR 200 million in January 2023 (December 2022: MYR 2.2 billion)”.
“Foreign holdings of government bonds increased by MYR 2.7 billion to MYR 228.9 billion (or 22.1% of total outstanding). This was due to increased net purchases of Malaysian government bonds (MGS, + MYR 1.3bn) and government investment issues (GII, +MYR 1.4bn).Foreigners sold more Malaysian T-bills, including Islamic T-bills (-Rs 1.7bn) and conventional T-bills (- 500 crores)”.
“Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) foreign exchange reserves increased by USD 0.5 billion in January 2023 to USD 115.2 billion. This is the highest level of foreign exchange reserves since March 2022. It is enough to finance 5.3 months of imports of goods and services and is equivalent to 1.0 times the total short-term external debt BNM’s net short position in currency swaps was increased by USD 400 million to USD 26.4 billion (or 23.0% of the foreign exchange reserves) at the end of December 2022, its highest level on record.”
Source: Fx Street
I am Joshua Winder, a senior-level journalist and editor at World Stock Market. I specialize in covering news related to the stock market and economic trends. With more than 8 years of experience in this field, I have become an expert in financial reporting.
