KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia has been removed from the United States (US) Department of the Treasury’s (Treasury) monitoring list of major trading partners whose currency practices and macroeconomic policies merit close attention from the US.
The Treasury’s Office of International Affairs, in its November report to the US Congress titled “Macroeconomics and Foreign Exchange Policies of Major Trading Partners of the United States,” said that Malaysia met one criterion in the last report (June) and November report.
“When a major trading partner meets two of the three criteria in the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 (2015 Act), that trading partner is placed on the monitoring list.
“Malaysia, therefore, has been removed from the monitoring list in this report,” it said.
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The 2015 Act requires the Treasury to provide semiannual reports on the macroeconomic and foreign exchange rate policies of the major trading partners of the US.
It mandates that the Treasury conduct an enhanced analysis of macroeconomic and exchange rate policies for each major trading partner that meets the three criteria.
The criteria are a bilateral trade surplus with the US of at least US$15 billion (US$1 = RM4.48), a material current account surplus of at least 3.0 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) and persistent, one-sided intervention in the foreign currency market for at least eight months during a year and with net purchases totalling at least 2.0 per cent of an economy’s GDP over 12 months.
