KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 2 (NNN-Bernama) — Bursa Malaysia (Malaysia’s Stock Exchange) continued to be the top-performing bourse in the region with 2.4 per cent growth in 2020, according to chairman Abdul Wahid Omar.
He said a large foreign outflow of US$6.08 billion (RM24.6 billion, US$1 = RM4.04) recorded in 2020 was well absorbed by domestic retail and institutional investors.
“In fact, we saw foreign funds invested some RM18.3 billion into our bond markets,” he said during a programme aired on Bernama TV (Astro 502) on Tuesday.
The programme — Menang Bersama: Rebuilding Malaysia’s Economy Together by Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz was moderated by Abdul Wahid.
Earlier in his speech, Tengku Zafrul said investors’ confidence continued to be reflected in our capital and financial markets, which showed encouraging performance under an extremely challenging 2020.
He said that including dividends, investors saw total returns of 5.8 per cent.
Average daily trading value also reached a high of RM4.2 billion.
Tengku Zafrul said the higher participation of retail investors saw a marked increase from close to a quarter (24.5 per cent) in 2019 to more than a third (37.7 per cent) in 2020.
Meanwhile, foreign shareholdings in our stock market remained at a healthy level of 21 per cent. Concurrently, the ringgit was also one of the top performers in the region with 1.7 per cent increase against the US dollar.
He said this was partly contributed by the recovery in prices of commodities as well as the positive non-resident inflows of RM18.3 billion in the bond market.
Overall, foreign holdings remained stable, accounting for an average of 22.8 per cent of domestic government debt, relative to 22.4 per cent in the year before.
— NNN-BERNAMA