Author name: WebMaster

Posted Date: February 18, 2022 Soaring inflation led to surging bond yields across the global markets in January 2022. The Federal Open Market Committee meeting saw the US Federal Reserve (Fed) leave the federal funds rate unchanged in the first month of the year. Nevertheless, future rate hikes are expected as the Fed hinted that

Posted Date: February 10, 2022 We envisage Malaysia’s GDP growth pace in 4Q2021 to come in at 4.2% y-o-y (3Q2021: -4.5%) given the pickup in economic activity at the time as more states transitioned into Phase 2 of the National Recovery Plan. Our estimate is based on improved high-frequency indicators in 4Q2021 vis-à-vis 4Q2020; such

Posted Date: January 26, 2022 The local bond market returned positive in December, offsetting the net foreign outflow in the preceding month. Net foreign inflow into local bonds broadened to RM6.2 billion (Nov: -RM3.6 billion) amid risk-on sentiment and steady global economic recovery. Total foreign holdings jumped to RM256.6 billion (Nov: RM250.4 billion), the highest

Posted date: January 26, 2022 Concerns are growing across the globe that more supply side issues would push inflation to levels where central banks find uncomfortable and, on top of that, dampen the already fragile economic recovery. As it is, several countries have already seen inflation rise to well above their monetary policy targets. We

Posted Date: January 24, 2022 The first Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting of 2022 saw Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) holding the overnight policy rate (OPR) unchanged at the record low of 1.75%. BNM has been on status quo since July 2020. The decision is in line with our expectation as we deem the current accommodative

Posted Date: January 19, 2022 As it stands, we take note of multilateral development banks’ (MDBs) projections suggesting dissipating low-base effects in 2022. We believe that governments will only resort to mild mobility restrictions, if any, to curb the spread of Omicron or subsequent COVID-19 variants considering high vaccination rates globally. As Malaysia’s largest trading

Posted Date: December 27, 2021 Malaysian Rating Corporation Berhad (MARC) is embarking on a corporate realignment exercise as it seeks to lay the groundwork for further group-wide transformation by transferring its regulatory license as a credit rating agency with the Securities Commission Malaysia and the Bank Negara Malaysia-accredited External Credit Assessment Institution status to its

Posted Date: December 22, 2021 MARC has released its finalised methodologies on Commercial Real Estate (CRE)-Backed Securitisation and Highway Investment Trust. These methodologies had previously been published as exposure drafts for public consultation. There have been no changes to these exposure drafts published on December 7, 2021. The methodologies outline the rating agency’s analytical frameworks

Posted Date: December 22, 2021 MARC has published a sector report on the domestic toll road industry, looking at MARC-rated concessionaires’ performance and traffic trends two years into the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a strong correlation between policy responses to the pandemic and traffic flow. MARC generally holds a stable outlook on the toll road