KUALA LUMPUR, April 27 — The ringgit opened marginally lower against the US dollar today as the focus has now shifted towards the US Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting later today, an analyst said.
At 9.01am, the local currency was steadily trading at 4.0980/1030 against the US dollar from Monday's close of 4.0960/1000.
The analyst said although sentiments should improve for the ringgit based on positive economic indicators, the current situation seemed volatile as investors turned into consolidation mode ahead of the two-day FOMC monetary policy meeting this week.
According to a Department of Statistics Malaysia (DoSM) report, Malaysia is heading towards an economic uptick in the coming months, following positive year-on-year growth in the country’s Leading Index (LI) in February 2021.
Meanwhile, Edward Moya, OANDA’s senior market analyst for The Americas, said the FOMC policy decision should be boring as policymakers are widely expected to keep policy steady while committing to no changes over interest rates or asset purchases, despite the accelerating economic recovery.
"Following the Covid-19 rollout and optimism of the full reopening of the economy in June, the world's largest economy is expected to grow by 6.5 per cent to 7.0 per cent in the first quarter this year," he said in a note.
Meanwhile, the ringgit was traded mostly higher against other major currencies.
The local currency slightly eased against the Singapore dollar at 3.0903/0952 from Monday’s 3.0890/0932 but improved versus the Japanese yen to 3.7892/7945 from 3.8017/8058.
It went up against the euro to 4.9500/9577 from 4.9545/9602 and strengthened against the British pound to 5.6938/7011 from 5.6992/7056.
— Bernama
