I would like to start a new thread for the purpose of sharing information on which money changer offer the best rate in town in both spore & JB and also news that will affect the value of the ringgit.
When spore became independent in 1965 and has its own currency, it started off with Malaysian ringgit having a higher value than sing dollar. (Ninety over ringgit to one hundred sing dollar)
After that the exchange rate became the same at 1:1. But now in year 2015 which is 50 years later, the ringgit has devalued by more than 2.7 times.
During the economic crisis period in year 1998, the ringgit has fallen the most by about 30 plus ringgit per 100 sing dollar. From about S$100=rm170 to S$100=rm205.
After that in the early 2000s, the ringgit continue to depreciate by rm3-rm7 per S$100 every year. Until the last two years, the devaluation of the ringgit is lagi even more jialat.
Base on the Sing dollar/Ringgit historical exchange rate below, we notice that almost every year the Ringgit has been depreciating by 3 to 7 ringgit per S$100 with the exception in year 2007 and 2010. The source is taken from one of the historical exchange rate website which is considered as fairly accurate.
Historical sing dollar to ringgit exchange rate base on an average over the 365 days in a year
2002 - 2.1236
2003 - 2.1804
2004 - 2.2488
2005 - 2.2759
2006 - 2.3086
2007 - 2.2809
2008 - 2.3545
2009 - 2.4239
2010 - 2.3623
2011 - 2.4332
2012 - 2.4713
2013 - 2.5171
2014 - 2.5991
2015 - 2.6712 (for past 6 months period)
see graph below:
http://sgd.fx-exchange.com/myr/excha...s-history.html
Historical record over 10 over years have already shown that ringgit has gradually weaken against the dollar with no sign of long term recovery, the strengthen of the ringgit is only short term and eventually it has devalued even lagi more as can be seen from 2007-2008 and 2010-2011.
However for the past 2 years, (2013-2015) the ringgit became very volatile and has devalued even greater.
Also recently, the ringgit has continuously depreciate against the sing dollars due to the following reasons:
1) Oil price has dropped very badly. Malaysia which depend heavily on oil export to other country to generate revenue. The oil revenue constitute one third of its total revenue.
2) Initially malaysian airline has already suffered a big loss due to its poor revenue management and rising fuel costs. The company then suspended services to many locations due to poor occupancy rate. (if every trip has too few passenger then it will be flying at a loss in revenue).
However, after the disasters happened e.g. two fatal incidents of Malaysia airline MH370 and MH 17, Malaysian airline has lost two Boeing 777 aircraft which were very expensive and they have to compensate for the damages. The company stock has also fallen by about 80% and ticket sales had also declined substantially.
3) Flood last year has caused many damaged to property, facilities and infrastructure which needed to be repaired and funds to help the poor to build their homes. The amount the msia garmen spend on this will affect the ringgit as the debt and expenses becomes more.
4) US dollar always move in the opposite direction against the ringgit. When US dollar appreciate, ringgit value will fall. The worst was during the year 1998 when the ASEAN economic crisis happened. At that time 1US$ = rm3.70. But as you can see now the value of US dollar is 1US$ = rm3.65 coming close to the value during the economic crisis. Now US dollar is appreciating and this is beyond the control of the msia govt.
5) the fall in rubber price and palm oil price also reduce the revenue collected and in turn affect the value of the ringgit.
6) Has little foreign reserve and hugh foreign debt unlikely to help the ringgit to a stabilise level.
Although some msian may think that the fall in the value of ringgit can help boost export revenue but not to forget that msia is NOT a high exporting country like Japan or Korea.
Last month a very important news is that MAS said that it will allow the Singapore dollar to continue appreciating at a modest pace and this will likely make sing dollar even stronger against the ringgit in the near future... 