Haha, dont want to explain to me, just use others ppl saying to prove your point. Well, your conclusion is true, but do you know how it work? You were showing the chart, let me explain why i said last year they use up a lot of their reserve to combat against weakening ringgit....they did not use it to pay down their debt, nor anything to do with 1mdb (i remember i read it somewhere you got this wrong concept of reserve falling bcoz of 1mdb).
First you need to know default risk. Malaysia gov have very low foreign currency denominated debt, even they have a lot, they will only use it when default risk arise i.e. cant pay debt interest, they will then only tap their reserve to pay. If not, most of the time the reserve will be there to accumulate.
Secondly, the way they use the reserve, like many other countries, is rather easy...buy up the local currency. Last year when ringgit drop bad bad, they use up the reserve to alleviate the weakness. So you can see the dramatic drop in reserve, using money always very quick right. But really fruitless effort.
Why no effect? Because forex market is way way bigger....big player like central bank, government can only exert certain effect. If others player do not agree with their ringgit weakness assessment, big player will only waste their reserve and not seeing the exchange rate improve much.
Thirdly, is malaysia reserve increasing faster than usual? Thereotically yes, n if i rmb correctly, not long ago also got report say that malaysia reserve increasr faster than usual...why? Bcoz weakening ringgit make malaysia able to export more, widening trade surplus...in effect making malaysia reserve increase faster than usual. So weak ringgit exhange rate is beneficial for export which in turn allow increase of reserve much more faster.
So all the while you keep quoting external debt...and reserve. Those 2 quite unrelated thing to prove your point malaysia is in deep shit. Let me tell you, ringgit has more to do with 1. Confident (including political confidence) 2. Oil price 3. FED rate policy (not so much on BNM since their policy is quite constant). These 3 factors exert more effect compare to other indicators.
Reserve, external debt etc...as long as the country economy fundamental is ok, those are not something need to be worry about.
Bloomberg is a reliable international news agency and should be unbiased in their reports.
I cannot write as good as those journalists so it is better to quote them than to explain the same thing, this way also more 够力, and I also cannot explain as detailed too.
And to explain in details may need to spend a few days in front of you.
A country's Foreign Reserves is very important and the last Asia Financial Crisis is a classic case history for reference.
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weakening ringgit make MY able to export more, widening trade surplus...in effect making MY reserve increase faster than usual. So weak RM exhange rate is beneficial for export which in turn allow increase of reserve much more faster."
Your economy "theory" and is not workable because you missed out a most important factor.
The main export commodities for MY is oil & gas and palm oil and also the country's major revenue source.
Unfortunately, the prices of all these commodities had fallen by as much as 70% in the last few years.
And as a commodity, you cannot export more than the global demand and more export only drives the prices down further. Fine example is OPEC's refusal to cut production causing the oil price to remain low - supply more than demand!
So, for MY, although export quantity is not affected but the value of export had gone down by more than half - you sell the same amount but got paid less than half.
Malaysia had been running on a deficit National Budget for a long time now -
spending more than they could earn for the whole decade!!!!
And because the govt cannot work on a balanced Budget, their Foreign Reserves had been shrinking yearly to the present US$98 billions.
Another worrying factor is the high Gross External Debt.
Out of the RM865 billions, the realized Federal Debt is RM678 billions, many were derived from foreign borrowings and bonds sales. (If MY decides to build the HSR, please add another RM70 billions to the Debt.)
With Bonds interest rates averaging about 2.5% , RM678 billions would means an annual payout of RM17 billions just to service the loans.
Having high debt is not always a problem for some countries but its the ability to service the debts and ultimately repaying the loan.
The full transparency of the various GLCs is also another issue in MY.
When the Swiss were investigating the 1MDB case, they discovered a Ponzi Scheme!
1MDB took a loans from Lembaga Tabung Haji and KWAP, a retirement fund for about RM6.5 billions and were till now not accounted for which means the actual Gross Debts could be even much higher!
Taking an overview at this whole mess, it seems like money were taken from A and B to put into C's account to make C looks good............a Ponzi Scheme as discovered by the Swiss?
You know how Greece went bankrupt?
All the things happening in MY now happened in Greece.