KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 13): Bank Negara Malaysia governor Datuk Muhammad Ibrahim said there would be more measures by the central bank to counter the ringgit's volatility if such steps were needed.

Muhammad said he hoped that recent measures by Bank Negara and the Financial Market Committee "will bring the ringgit value closer to its underlying economic fundamentals".

"Measures taken by Bank Negara and the committee have reduced the ringgit's volatility. Should further steps [be] required, we will introduce appropriate measures to strengthen existing policies.

"Malaysia is an exporting country, and export earnings were not converted back to the ringgit. In 2016, Malaysian tourists spent about RM41 billion overseas, and our foreign labour brought out RM34 billion combined to their home countries. All this further reduced the demand towards our currency," he said.

Muhammad was speaking to reporters at the launch of Bank Negara's Karnival Kewangan 2017 (Financial Carnival 2017) here today.

At 2:36pm today, the ringgit weakened to 4.4637 against the US dollar, Bloomberg data showed. Over the last one year, the exchange rate was between 3.8442 and 4.5002.

The ringgit has weakened against a stronger US dollar in anticipation of US interest rate hikes. Such sentiment followed expectation of US President-elect Donald Trump's expansionary fiscal policy.

Steps taken by Bank Negara to support the weakening ringgit include regulation that requires exporters to convert 75% of its export earnings to ringgit, as well as taking action against speculative activities in the offshore ringgit non-deliverable forward (NDF) market.