The Philippine peso plunged to 57.90 against the US dollar Monday, the lowest in nearly 18 months, on the general strength of the greenback.
The local currency weakened from its Friday’s finish of 57.62 a dollar. Total volume reached $1.2 billion Monday, lower than Friday’s $1.76 billion.
Oxford Economics, a UK-based research organization, said that based on its modelling, a strong dollar retains its capacity to damage emerging markets’ growth.
It said the dollar’s real effective exchange rate has risen by around 10 percent since early 2022, although the impact on emerging market (EM) growth has been modest, partly because of greater resilience to external shocks than in the 1980s and 1990s.
“But some weaker economies have been hit hard and further dollar gains could see aggregate EM growth ex China slip well below baseline forecasts,” it said.
