KUALA LUMPUR, March 18 — Short-term interbank rates closed steady today on Bank Negara Malaysia’s (BNM) operations to absorb surplus liquidity from the financial system.

Liquidity in the conventional system fell to RM37.88 billion from RM43.76 billion this morning while for Islamic funds, it eased to RM19.02 billion from RM20.02 billion this morning.

Earlier, the central bank called for three conventional money market tenders, a Qard-Islamic range maturity auction tender and a reverse repo tender.

At 4 pm, the central bank called for a RM37.9 billion conventional money market tender and a RM18.0 billion Murabahah money market tender, both for three-day monies.

BNM has also revised the Murabahah overnight tender from RM16.0 billion to RM18.0 billion.

The average Islamic overnight rate stood at 1.72 per cent, while the one-, two- and three-week rates stood at 1.78 per cent, 1.82 per cent and 1.85 per cent respectively. — Bernama