Asian currencies post a third weekly advance

bangkok — Asian currencies completed a third weekly gain, led by South Korea’s won, as global funds increased holdings of the region’s assets amid easing concern about the timing of US interest-rate increases.

Several Federal Reserve policy makers said a rise in their median projection for the main interest rate exaggerated the likely speed of tightening, according to minutes released last week of the central bank’s March meeting. Foreign funds bought $1.9 billion more Indian, South Korean and Taiwanese stocks than they sold last week, official data show. In Indonesia, the rupiah had its biggest weekly drop this year after unofficial results of a parliamentary vote showed Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo’s party won less support than expected.

“Easing concern about the early rate-hike in the US helped to boost emergingmarket currencies this week,” Tsutomu Soma, manager of the fixed-income business unit at Rakuten Securities said in Tokyo. “Now that general sentiment is quite good, Asian currencies may continue to see some appreciation bias in the near future.”

The Bloomberg-JPMorgan Asia Dollar Index, which tracks the region’s 10 major currencies excluding the yen, climbed 0.3 per cent last week to 115.78 in Hong Kong. The won jumped 1.8 per cent to 1,035.35 per dollar, Malaysia’s ringgit rose 1.4 per cent to 3.2362 and the Philippine peso gained 1.5 per cent to 44.29, data show.

The won touched its strongest level since August 2008 on Friday as the Bank of Korea raised its 2014 growth forecast to four per cent from 3.8 per cent.