An employee counts U.S. banknotes at a bank in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo by VnExpress/Thanh Tung
The U.S. dollar inched down against the Vietnamese dong Friday morning while it headed for a weekly loss against major currencies.
Vietcombank sold the currency at VND26,241, down 0.01% from Thursday. The greenback fell by 0.08% to around VND26,305 on the black market.
The State Bank of Vietnam reduced its reference rate by 0.01% to VND24,992.
Globally, the dollar was headed for a weekly loss on Friday, undermined by signs of fragility in the U.S. economy and as trade negotiations between Washington and its trading partners made little progress despite a looming deadline, Reuters reported.
Currencies were taken on a round trip overnight, with most surging against the dollar initially on optimism that Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke in a more than one-hour-long call, before paring some of their gains.
The euro also got a further lift from the European Central Bank’s (ECB) hawkish rhetoric following a widely expected rate cut, which sent the common currency to a 1-1/2-month high of $1.1495 on Thursday. It last traded 0.05% higher at $1.1449.
Most currency pairs were also little changed in the early Asian session on Friday, with sterling up just 0.1% to $1.3583 having scaled a more than three-year top in the previous session. It was set to rise 0.9% for the week. The yen fell 0.1% to 143.74 per dollar.
Against a basket of currencies, the dollar was little changed at 98.72 after having hit a six-week low on Thursday, and was headed for a weekly loss of 0.7%.
