In other commodities, oil slumped to five-month lows on Thursday amid record trading volume in Brent crude, as Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and other producers appeared to rule out deeper supply cuts to reduce the world's persistent glut of crude. Markets also remained cautious ahead of US government payrolls report expected later in the day, following March's underwhelming 98,000 figure. Economists on average expect 185,000 jobs were created in April.
Attention will also be on Fed officials including Fed Chair Janet Yellen and Vice Chair Stanley Fischer, who are due to speak on Friday. "Any indication of wage pressure, coupled with speeches from Yellen, Fischer, Williams, Rosengren, Evans and Bullard would keep market players on their toes going into the weekend," OCBC Bank said in a note.
The Malaysian ringgit was among the big decliners, weakening 0.2 percent against the dollar as government data showed that annual export growth in March slowed slightly from the previous month. Exports in March rose 24.1 percent from a year earlier, beating economists' forecast of a 19.2 percent rise, but were down slightly from the 26.5 percent increase in February.
The trade surplus in March narrowed to 5.4 billion ringgit ($1.25 billion) from February's 8.7 billion ringgit. "The exports reflect the impact of higher commodity prices previously. From a forward looking perspective, it's the outlook for those prices that matters. The sharp decline in energy prices has likely weakened sentiment on the ringgit in the short term," said Tariq Ali, investment strategist at Standard Chartered Bank.
Bucking the trend, the Japanese yen gained 0.2 percent against the dollar. Japan's finance ministry has proposed to launch bilateral foreign exchange swap arrangements of up to 40 billion dollars with Southeast Asian nations to enable Tokyo to provide yen funds to these countries during times of financial crisis. Sentiment toward Asian currencies has improved from two weeks ago, as worries about the risk of an anti-establishment shock from the French presidential elections subsided, a Reuters poll showed on Thursday.
Bullish bets on the Taiwan dollar nearly doubled compared with the previous poll two weeks ago, and rose to the largest since February 2011, according to the poll of 15 analysts, traders and fund managers. The Taiwan dollar, which hit a 2-1/2 year high of 29.940 per US dollar on Wednesday, has rallied this year on the back of foreign investor inflows into Taiwanese equities.
Volatility in the currency against the US dollar is "unavoidable", and the central bank would not intervene in response to continuing foreign fund inflows, Taiwan's central bank deputy governor said on Wednesday. Among other Asian currencies, investors were estimated to have increased their long positions in the Indian rupee to the largest since May 2014. The rupee had hit a 20-month high against the dollar on April 26, as India's benchmark stock indexes rallied to record highs.
The Indonesian rupiah edged lower on Friday to a near one-month low against the dollar. Indonesia, Southeast Asia's largest economy, grew 5.01 percent in January-March on an annual basis, the statistics bureau said. On a quarterly, non-seasonally adjusted basis, gross domestic product (GDP) contracted 0.34 percent. The government's growth target for 2017 is 5.1 percent, while Bank Indonesia is forecasting a 5.0-5.4 percent growth.
Copyright Reuters, 2017