I checked. Not even one person shared this piece of news in their Facebook page. I guess this is just too small a news even if every international rating agency would always be looking at export growth before they rate any country. Plus, the exports would determine the trade surplus / deficit and if the country shows a narrowing gap or a deficit, it would get a lower rating and so on. Malaysia’s exports surged to RM75.8bil in October, 2015 and this is the highest ever since January of 2014. Main reasons are due to robust demand from major markets including Asean, China, the EU and the US. The rise in exports were mainly to China, EU, US, Singapore, and Australia.
Malaysia has been having trade surpluses for 216 consecutive months since November 1997. Not a typo, that’s already 18 years of trade surpluses. Does not really sound like a country about to go Greece’s way, right? Total trade surplus for 2015 is RM76.07 billion. While exports grew tremendously, imports are down marginally, by 0.4 percent. Thus, the main reason for the huge surplus is simply because Malaysia is exporting much more. Malaysia imports the most from the following countries: China, US, Taiwan, Thailand and EU. Yes, one missing country would be Singapore. I would have loved it more if Singapore and Malaysia has a much higher trades between us than today.
Latest update: Bank Negara has announced on Monday that it’s international reserves is at RM420.1 billion or equivalent to US$94.6 billion as at Nov 30. This is higher than RM417.2 billion recorded on Nov 13, 2015. The reserves position is sufficient to finance 8.6 months of retained imports and is 1.1 times the short-term external debt.
I remain steadfast with my views that Ringgit is undervalued if we are evaluating Malaysia on the same benchmark(s) with that currency which has been appreciating against majority of all countries in the world. Let’s wish this favourite country of many the best so that rates would be raised within December 2015 itself and continues to be normalised over the next few years. The right action if you believe the worst is not over for Ringgit? Don’t buy properties in places where the prices are already higher than the sky, even if Chinese (China) buyers ask you for advice. Perhaps to ensure flexibility, one can even buy stocks in our southern neighbour. This allows us to hedge against that continuous drop in Ringgit. Happy analyzing and deciding.
written on 4 Dec 2015
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