Malaysia's central bank is likely to cut its benchmark rate to 3% at a policy review on Tuesday to cope with a slowdown in growth, a slim majority of analysts in a Reuters poll said.
KUALA LUMPUR: Bank Negara Malaysia’s international reserves rose marginally to US$104.4bil as at August 30 from US$104.2bil two weeks earlier.
The central bank said the reserves position is sufficient to finance 7.5 months of retained imports and is 0.9 times the short-term external debt.
Bank Negara said the short-term external debt is mostly accounted by banking institutions, reflecting the centralisation of liquidity management of Malaysian banks operating in the region and the sizeable presence of foreign banks in Malaysia.
These institutions hold substantial external assets, which can be drawn upon to meet their external obligations without creating a claim on Bank Negara Malaysia’s international reserves.
The main components of the international reserves were foreign currency reserves (US$98.5bil), International Monetary Fund reserves position (US$900mil), Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) (US$1.2bil), gold (US$1.5bil) and other reserve assets (US$2.3bil).
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