USD/THB ends steady at 33.97-33.99 vs 33.98 last close. Foreign players buy but overall trade fairly thin amid absence of fresh catalysts, plus players want to avoid holding positions over weekend. “There’s nothing new to drive the market. The dollar/baht should hover around this level for quite a while,” says local dealer. Central bank’s downward revision to 2009 GDP but bullish stance on 2010 economy was widely expected, thus had little impact on market. Resistance tipped at 34.10, support at 33.80.
The Philippine government is considering funding its 2010 offshore borrowing requirements this year. That makes a lot of sense with interest rates likely to raise and the country facing political risk as a May election looms.
“If you can’t wait until the second half of next year, why not prefund now?,”
said Rafael Algarra, treasurer at Security Bank Corp. in Manila. “And even if
you could wait to take the uncertainty of the election out of the equation,
interest rates might be going up by then.” Read the rest of this entry »
Moderate selling of U.S. dollars by banks near the session’s end provided support for China’s yuan, which ended unchanged against the U.S. unit Friday despite a higher dollar-yuan central parity.
On the over-the-counter market, the dollar ended at CNY6.8310 around 0930 GMT, unchanged from Thursday’s close. It traded between CNY6.8310 and CNY6.8320. Read the rest of this entry »