Rupiah Hits Rp13,000 per US Dollar on Thursday Morning
5 March 2015 16:08 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The rupiah interbank exchange rate in Jakarta on Thursday morning slipped further by 25 points to begin trading against the greenback at Rp13,000—down from its previous position at Rp12,975 per United States (US) dollar.
"The rupiah is depreciating after data released by ADP indicates that there are an additional 212,000 job opportunities created by the private sector in February," said the head researcher for Monex Investindo Futures, Ariston Tjendra, in Jakarta on Thursday.
According to Ariston, the figure shows that the US economy is slowly recovering, which is boosting the value of the greenback against the majority of the world's currencies, including the rupiah.
On the other hand, the US dollar is also helped by the increasing yield of the US Treasury bonds in the past couple of days, which improves the outlook for the US currency. "The increase of yield is due to the monetary oversupply caused by the monetary easing by the Bank of Japan (BoJ) and the European Central Bank (ECB), which subsequently causes the greenback to appreciate," said Ariston.
Meanwhile, the head researcher at NH Korindo Securities Indonesia, Reza Priyambada, said that speculations surrounding Bank Indonesia's (BI) rate decrease was adding pressure to the rupiah exchange rate.
"Expectations of a rate lowering is driving short-term investors to unload their rupiah-denominated holdings," said Reza.
ANTARA