Dollar hits all-time high

By Minh Hieu   April 2, 2024 | 11:53 pm PT
Dollar hits all-time high
An employee counts U.S. banknotes at a bank in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo by VnExpress/Thanh Tung
The U.S. dollar climbed to a historic high against the Vietnamese dong on Wednesday morning.

Vietcombank sold the dollar at VND25,120, up 0.28% from Tuesday. Other banks are also selling the greenback at around VND25,242, an unprecedentedly high level.

The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) raised its reference rate by 0.06% to VND24,040.

It also rose 0.08% to VND25,540 at unofficial exchange points.

While the dollar has been on the rise for months, having increased against the dong by 2.87% in the year to date, the uptrend is more pronounced in the past two days after the central bank stopped selling bonds to mop up the dong.

"The State Bank of Vietnam might need stronger policies to reduce the demand for the U.S. dollar," research unit SSI Research remarked.

Globally, the dollar was on the front foot on Wednesday, pinning the yen near its lowest its decades though the heightened threat of currency intervention by Tokyo capped further declines in the Japanese currency, Reuters reported.

The yen was last at 151.585 per dollar, languishing near last month's slump to 34-year lows of 151.975 in the wake of the Bank of Japan's historic policy shift.

Elsewhere, the euro rose 0.02% to $1.0772, standing some distance away from an over one-month low hit in the previous session, after the U.S. dollar ran into some profit-taking late overnight.

The dollar, which on Tuesday touched a nearly five-month high of 105.10 against a basket of currencies, was last steady at 104.76.

"Markets have generally scaled back their expectations for FOMC rate cuts in recent weeks, given the strength of the U.S. economic data and pushback from FOMC officials," said Carol Kong, a currency strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA).

"I think the dollar will hold up pretty well in the near term, and that will be a headwind for the other major currencies."

 
 
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