KUALA LUMPUR: The local benchmark index spent most of the morning session in the red on Monday despite most Asian markets rising on strong US jobs data.
Bursa Malaysia has been in a bearish mood with investors worried over the nation's debt and whether the government's new policies may threaten sovereign ratings.
Credit Suisse noted in a report today that Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng's assurance that the government will meet a budget deficit target of 2.8% may help soothe investors' concerns.
At 12.30pm, the FBM KLCI was 0.16 points lower to 1,756.22. Turnover was 1.6 billion shares with a value of RM1.21bil. There were 414 decliners versus 381 advancers and 337 counters unchanged.
Tenaga Nasional weighed on the market with a 16 sen loss to RM14.34. Maybank also slipped six sen to RM9.98.
Other leading decliners included Genting falling 11 sen to RM8.79, Digi sliding five sen to RM4.44 and Sime Darby Plantation
slipping two sen to RM5.33.
Petronas Chemicals lifted the market with a 16 sen gain to RM8.29. MISC added nine sen to RM6.28, IOI rose five sen to RM4.67 and Genting Malaysia put on six sen to RM5.07.
MyEG fell in morning trade as it was reported over the weekend that its management of illegal foreign workers for the rehiring programme would not continue past June 30, 2018.
The company clarified in a stock exchange filing on Monday that there was no ad hoc termination of the programme, which was scheduled for completion on June 30
"The Board would like to assure all parties that there are no changes to its business activities and all concession and commercial services are operating as usual," it said.
MyEG fell 15.5 sen or 18% to 70.5 sen, which triggered Bursa's criteria for suspending its proprietary day trader (PDT) and intraday short selling (IDSS) activities.
Among leading decliners on the stock exchange, Dutch Lady slipped 62 sen to RM67.02, and Rapid dropped 25 sen to RM5.56.
Gainers uncluded BAT, rising RM1.06 to 33.64; MAHB, putting on 25 sen to RM8.80; and Hartalega, gaining 24 sen to RM6.37.
In commodities, oil prices continued to slip on expectations of rising output. WTI crude fell eight vcents to US$65.73 a barrel and Brent crude fell 31 cents to US$76.48 a barrel.
On the forex, the ringgit was little changed against the greenback at 3.9780. It was 0.58% weaker against the pound sterling at 5.3183 and marginally stronger against the Singapore dollar at 2.9749.
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