TEMPO.CO, Jakarta-Rupiah soared and posted the biggest weekly gain since 2001. Supporting factors are result of the minutes of the Federal Reserve meeting last month stating chances raising interest rates this year gets increasingly unlikely.

In Friday’s trading until 2:11 am, rupiah gained 3.23 percent to Rp13,439 per US dollar with the Bank Indonesia middle rate at Rp13,521. The rupiah rose highest in the Asia Pacific region in Friday’s trading.

Michael Every, Head of Financial Markets Research at Rabobank Group, said the high rebound of some emerging market currencies such as the rupiah and the ringgit is the impact of the deep decline last month.

"But, the problem is not over when the Federal Reserve's interest rate has not gone up and China's economy has not recovered," he said as quoted by Bloomberg, Friday, October 9.

Strengthening of emerging market currencies including the rupiah also came from negative economic data from the US and the minutes of the meeting of the Feds released on Thursday.

US monthly inflation in August alone was still at the level of -0.1 percent.

Another driver of the exchange rate in Friday’s trading is the increase in commodity prices. Bloomberg Commodity Index which covers 22 commodities records intraday increase of 0.83 percent to 91.09. Throughout this month, the commodity index has appreciated by 4.49 percent.

Rising commodity prices push the rupiah and the ringgit since the two neighboring countries was quite dependent on exports of commodities in the trade balance.

BISNIS.COM