Interest Rates

Notes on Singapore’s and Cambodia’s benchmark rates:

Singapore: Since the early 1980s, Singapore’s monetary policy has been centered on the management of the exchange rate, rather than interest rates, due to the trade-reliant nature of the Republic’s economy, according to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and The Straits Times. To achieve this goal, (1) the Singapore Dollar (SGD) is managed against a basket of currencies of the country’s primary trading partners; (2) MAS operates a managed float regime for the SGD with the trade-weighted exchange rate allowed to fluctuate within a policy band; and (3) the exchange rate policy band is reviewed periodically to ensure it remains constant with the underlying fundamentals of the economy, according to MAS.