• Ministry of Finance Malaysia (MOF) had released its 49th LAKSANA report last week

• The FBM KLCI decreased by 0.2% or 3.9 points for the week to settle at 1,608.4 points.

• US consumer price index (CPI) increased 0.6% in March

• The euro area annual inflation rate was 1.3% in March 2021, while EU headline inflation was 1.7%.

• UK monthly real GDP is estimated to have increased by 0.4% in February 2021, while February’s level is 7.8% below that seen in February 2020.

• China 1Q21 GDP reached CNY24,931.0bn, up by 18.3% yoy, or up by 0.6% over that in the fourth quarter of 2020.

• China exports grew by 30.6% yoy in March to USD241.13bn

• Singapore’s GDP grew by 0.2% yoy in the 1Q21

• Central banks of New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Turkey kept the current policy settings.

MALAYSIA ECONOMY

• According to Ministry of Finance Malaysia (MOF) 49th LAKSANA report, on the private sector side, the government has approved RM11.87bn to 25,289 SMEs as of 2nd April 2021 through SME Soft Loans Funds facilitated by BNM. Meanwhile, under the tourism sector financing PENJANA, 315 applications were approved with total funding of RM62.9m compared to 308 applications approved with total funding of RM61.9m in the previous week. As of 2nd April, under Bumiputra Relief Financing (BRF), the fund has been channeled to 749 SMEs involving a total of RM226.8m. Furthermore, RM59.3m had been channeled to 13,857 businesses in the form of grants and loans for subscription to digitization services as of early April.

• To support employment conditions, the government had allocated RM700m for a short-term employment program known as MySTEP. As of the end of March, 24,919 persons had employed through MySTEP. Besides, the government also introduced the wages subsidy to support the labor market. As of 2nd April, RM12.841bn had channeled to 322,177 employers and 2.64 million employees under the wage subsidy 1.0 scheme. For the wage subsidy 2.0 scheme, a total of RM1.112bn was channeled to 72,875 employers to continue to operate and maintain employment for 626,955 employees.

• The US Department of the Treasury claimed in its semiannual Report on Macroeconomic and Foreign Exchange Policies of Major Trading Partners of the United States that Malaysia does not publish foreign exchange intervention data, hence forcing Treasury staff to estimate the scale of Malaysia’s intervention. According to the claimed, Bank Negara Malaysia’s net purchases of foreign exchange in 2020 are estimated at around USD2bn (about RM8.25bn) as the ringgit came under considerable pressure at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic shock but recovered over the rest of the year as investor sentiment improved

Source: BIMB Securities Research - 19 Apr 2021