KINIBIZ Tomorrow Bank Negara Malaysia’s committee meets again to decide whether or not to raise interest rates. Tiger thinks the last interest rate rise in July was unwarranted and therefore surmises the interest rate should be left well alone this time around.

Most analysts this time around feel interest rates should be left where they are, which is quite a bit higher than most other countries around the world. And it looks like that’s what the central bank, Bank Negara Malaysia, will do.

As this Tiger said ahead of the last rise in the benchmark overnight policy rate (OPR) by 0.25 percentage points or 25 basis points to 3.25 percent in July, Bank Negara was perhaps a tad too early in hiking the interest rates.

This has been borne out in the interest rate movements since July when not one of the countries surveyed raised their key interest rate in the last two months. While most kept their interest rates unchanged, two actually lowered them, Singapore by four basis points and Europe by 10 basis points.

By far and away, Malaysia’s interest rates are still the highest at 3.25 percent while the next closest, Australia, has an interest rate 100 basis points lower at just 2.5 percent. The European Union, Japan and the US have hardly any interest rate at all at 0.25 percent for the US, 0.1 percent for Japan and 0.05 percent for Europe. That’s nearly the whole world.

For the full story go to KiniBiz .

This article was written by P Gunasegaram .