KUALA LUMPUR – Bursa Malaysia continued to be among the top performing bourses in the region with 2.4% growth in 2020, according to chairman Tan Sri Abdul Wahid Omar.
He said the large foreign outflow of RM24.6 billion recorded last year was well absorbed by domestic retail and institutional investors.
“In fact, we saw foreign funds invest some RM18.3 billion into our bond markets,” he said during a programme on Bernama TV today.
The programme – Menang Bersama: Rebuilding Malaysia's Economy Together by Finance Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz – was moderated by Wahid.
Earlier, Tengku Zafrul had said investors’ confidence continues to be reflected in Malaysia’s 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%.
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%) in 2019 to more than a third (37.7%) in 2020.
Meanwhile, foreign shareholdings in the Malaysian stock market remained at a healthy level of 21%. Concurrently, the ringgit was also one of the top performers in the region with a 1.7% increase against the US dollar.
He said this was partly due to the recovery in prices of commodities as well as positive non-resident inflows of RM18.3 billion in the bond market.
Overall, foreign holdings remained stable, accounting for an average of 22.8% of domestic government debt, relative to 22.4% the year before. – Bernama, February 2, 2021
