The Philippine peso closed trading on Feb. 2 at 53.845:$1, its strongest position against the greenback in seven and a half months or since closing at 53.75:$1 in June 2022.
On Thursday, the peso ended the session near the intraday strongest of 53.835:$1 and gained 63 centavos from 54.475:$1 the previous trading day.
Michael Ricafort, chief economist at the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., said it happened amid a continued weakness of the US dollar against major global currencies.
Ricafort said the American currency reached new nine-month lows after the United States Federal Reserve increased the federal funds rate by a smaller increment of 25 basis points compared to previous hikes, as widely expected.
“The peso also strengthened after the announcement [of] some improvement in the latest outstanding national government debt data as of December 2022,” he added.