Dropped Rupiah, The Culprit Is The United States Economic Data

Illustrated. (Irfan Meidianto / VOI)

JAKARTA - The rupiah exchange rate on the spot market closed down on trading Wednesday, August 12. The rupiah closed down 0.55 percent or 80 points to a level of Rp14,760 per US dollar (US).

Head of Research at Monex Investindo Futures, Ariston Tjendra, said that the weakening of the rupiah was still due to the effect of the strengthening of the US dollar due to indications of US economic recovery.

"The US economic data released recently, such as labor data and producer price index data, are better than market expectations," Ariston told VOI.

Rupiah led the weakening of Asian currencies against US dollar this afternoon. Apart from the rupiah, the Japanese yen also fell 0.30 percent, the Indian rupee weakened 0.15 percent, and the Singapore dollar weakened 0.05 percent.

Then, the Chinese yuan weakened 0.02 percent, the Malaysian ringgit weakened 0.03 percent, the Taiwan dollar weakened 0.003 percent and the Hong Kong dollar weakened 0.001 percent against the US dollar.

Meanwhile, the Thai baht, Korean won and the Philippine peso strengthened against the US dollar by strengthening 0.10 percent, 0.04 percent and 0.006 percent, respectively.