Peso hits fresh 12-year-low of P53.50 :$1 in intraday trade

June 18, 2018

The peso slid to a new 12-year-low of P53.5o against the US dollar before rallying to P53.48 on Monday. On Friday, it closed at P53.27.

Volume reached $568 million from $796.45 on Friday as the market awaited the central bank's policy-setting meeting on June 21.

"The BSP (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas) should do something rather than do nothing. I'm not sure if intervening directly in the forex markets would be the way to go for the BSP. We're still looking at relatively high inflation rates.," said Manny Ocampo, director of finance of Abacus Securities, referring to the central bank, in an interview with ANC.

The central bank raised policy rates by .25 percentage points on April in response to rising inflation.

The government's economic managers had said the weak peso would boost exports, attract investments and help families of overseas foreign workers.

On Monday, the central bank said personal remittances from overseas workers rose 12.9 percent toreach $2.6 billion in April on a year-on-year basis. For January to April, personal remittances were up by four percent to $10.4 billion.

The Philippine Stock Exchange index went down by close to two percent at one point by erased some of its losses to close at 7,414.11, down 115.43 for the day.

In the broader market, there were 161 decliners, 44 gainers and 40 shares unchanged.

Volume reached 1.61 billion worth P7.75 billion from the previous session's 940 million shares worth P12.31 billion shares. Foreigners were net sellers at P5.38 billion compared to buying of P4.08 billion.

Most active shares were led by SM Prime, up 0.72 percent to P35; Ayala Land, down 1.4 percent to P38.60 and Ayala Corp., down 2.63 percent to P925.50. DMS