Friday, July 6, 2012

BNM Watch: MPC Keeps OPR On Hold

As expected, the OPR was kept at 3.00% at yesterday’s Monetary Policy Committee meeting (excerpt):

Monetary Policy Statement

At the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting today, Bank Negara Malaysia decided to maintain the Overnight Policy Rate (OPR) at 3.00 percent.

The pace of the global recovery has moderated in the recent months. The latest data pointed to slower economic activity and more challenging growth prospects in several regions around the world…

In the domestic economy, recent data and surveys of business conditions suggest that consumption and investment activity remains resilient…The strong investment activity is mainly led by the domestic-oriented industries, the oil and gas sector and the steady progress in the construction of infrastructure projects.

Headline inflation is expected to remain moderate for the remainder of 2012. With some excess capacity in the economy, the strength of domestic demand is not expected to result in inflationary conditions…

That sums it up pretty well. If you want more brevity, it roughly translates to: the rest of the world is in trouble, but we’re doing ok.

Next meeting’s scheduled for September 6th, a little over two weeks after Aidil Fitri. Given the Ramadhan effect, the data’s going to be hard to figure out. Nevertheless, I don’t think there’s going to be significant enough changes in the economic outlook to warrant a move then either.

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