At 5pm, the ringgit was at 3.4120/4150 compared with Thursday close of 3.4000/4030.
The dealer said the recent unexpected move by the US Federal Reserve to lift interest rates for emergency loans buoyed demand for the greenback and made riskier currencies less attractive.
"People were reluctant to take heavy positions amid the weakness in local and regional stock markets," the dealer said.
The local currency also traded lower against the Singapore dollar at 2.4103/4146 from 2.4093/4136 on Thursday.
However, it rose against the Japanese yen to 3.7176/7233 from 3.7396/7433, the British pound to 5.2538/2591 from 5.3088/3145 and the euro to 4.6038/6096 from 4.6101/6148.
INTERBANK RATES
SHORT-TERM interbank rates closed steady yesterday as Bank Negara Malaysia actively intervened, issuing several money market tenders to keep in check excess liquidity in the system, dealers said.
The overnight rate was quoted at 2.0 per cent, while the one-week, two-week and three-week rates hovered around 2.02 and 2.05 per cent.
Bank Negara this morning carried out five conventional tenders, three Al-Wadiah tenders, a repo tender as well as a Commodity Murabahah Programme tender to offset the liquidity surplus.
As a result, the excess in the conventional system was eased to RM25.01 billion from RM34.74 billion estimated earlier, while the surplus in the Islamic system reduced to RM6.99 billion from RM8.78 billion.
In late trading yesterday, the central bank also called tenders to borrow RM25 billion from the conventional operations and another RM5.2 billion from the Islamic funds, both of three-day money.
KLIBOR
THE three-month Kuala Lumpur Interbank Offered Rate (KLIBOR) futures on Bursa Malaysia Derivatives closed lower yesterday.
The March 2010 contract declined 19 ticks to 97.58 with nine lots traded.
At 11am fixing, the underlying three-month KLIBOR was at 2.24 per cent. Meanwhile, the five-year Malaysian Government Securities futures closed untraded. - Bernama
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