At 6pm, the local currency slid to 4.5265/4.5285 against the greenback from 4.5070/4.5085 at yesterday’s close. It had touched slightly above the 4.5200 level from this morning, which was a fresh 24-year low against the greenback.

Dealers attributed the continuing slide to heavy pressure due to expectations of a substantial increase in US interest rate by the Federal Reserve as inflation remained persistently high.

ActivTrades’s market analyst Alexander Londono said that with inflation expectations still high even in Asia, this had kept investors away from riskier assets as they continued to favour safe-haven assets such as the US dollar.

“But we must keep in mind that the currency is over-extended to the downside and prone to a bullish correction,” he told Bernama.

Londono said that if the reading on the producer price index from the US came out higher than expected, the US dollar could chalk up further gains at the expense of the ringgit.

Bank Islam Malaysia Bhd chief economist Firdaos Rosli noted that the ringgit would remain under pressure against the US dollar as the interest rate gap widened, while the US federal funds rate would be higher than the overnight policy rate (OPR) by next week.

He said the market was also reacting to the latest US consumer price index (CPI) data which showed that the country’s inflation has remained high, despite the lower oil prices in August and the aggressive rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve over the past few months.

The ringgit was also traded lower against a basket of major currencies.

The local unit eased against the Singapore dollar to 3.2252/3.2268 from yesterday’s close of 3.2153/3.2174 and depreciated against the Japanese yen to 3.1616/3.1635 from 3.1282/3.1301.

It also weakened against the British pound to 5.2331/5.2354 from 5.1989/5.2012 yesterday and declined against the euro to 4.5306/4.5326 from 4.5105/4.5125 previously.