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Luckily unchanged, if change then BLR will increase,
My house loan will suffers.
Malaysia's central bank left interest rates unchanged for a second meeting, choosing to support growth as Europe's debt crisis and a faltering U.S. recovery increased the risks to Asian economies. Bank Negara Malaysia kept the benchmark overnight policy rate at 3 percent, it said in a statement in Kuala Lumpur today. The decision was predicted by all 18 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The central bank also refrained from increasing lenders' reserve requirements after raising the ratio to 4 percent in July. "The more challenging external environment has" increased the "downside risks" to Malaysia's economy, Bank Negara said. "While inflation remains a concern, the increased uncertainties on the global and domestic economic growth prospects and their potential consequences could have a moderating impact on inflation."
Malaysia joins South Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines in refraining from raising rates today as policy makers seek to protect their economies from easing global demand even as elevated inflation limits the scope for stimulus. Southeast Asia's third-largest economy grew at the slowest pace since 2009 last quarter and a report today showed export growth slowed in July as electronics sales fell. "The signal from Bank Negara is quite clear," Suhaimi Ilias, an economist at Maybank Investment Bank in Kuala Lumpur, said before the decision. "They are more concerned about the downside risk to growth than the upside risk to inflation." The ringgit has fallen against the dollar along with most regional currencies this month, as expansions slow from China to Taiwan and many Asian policy makers hold off on further monetary tightening. It fell 0.2 percent to 2.9935 a dollar as of 5:54 p.m. in Kuala Lumpur today.
Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Glenn Stevens held rates at 4.75 percent this week for the ninth straight meeting and signaled a willingness to keep rates on hold while the nation's consumers retrench and global financial markets create instability for the "foreseeable future." "The balance of risk has decisively shifted to growth despite persistently high inflation," Irvin Seah, an economist at DBS Group Holdings Ltd. in Singapore, said in a note before the report. "Bank Negara Malaysia has initiated its interest rate normalization process earlier than many central banks in the region. It probably has enough room to pause and assess the situation." Bank Negara Malaysia has raised the benchmark rate by a percentage point since the beginning of March 2010 to curb inflation, most recently a quarter-point increase in May. The country's economy expanded 4 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, after growing 4.9 percent in the previous three months. Governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz said last month gross domestic product may increase at the lower end of its forecast range for 2011. Consumer prices rose 3.4 percent in July from a year earlier after climbing 3.5 percent in June. -- Bloomberg
1 comments:
most of the CBs maintain the rate unchanged