singapore stock market ,singapore stock market news ,SINGAPORE (Dow Jones)–The Singapore dollar was lower in late Asian trade Friday on the back of overnight greenback strength and tepid showing from regional bourses.

The U.S. dollar traded in a relatively narrow range, moving between a high of S$1.4211 and a low of S$1.4157.

A trader with a foreign bank said that comments by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner overnight highlighting the importance of a strong U.S. dollar will lend some support to the greenback.

Still, OCBC said it sees a potential for risk appetite to resume at the expense of the greenback beyond the short term.

“Going ahead, the phasing out of the dollar liquidity programs by the central banks indicate official comfort with normalizing liquidity conditions in the wholesale market but do not indicate a move to a more hawkish stance across the board,” OCBC said in a report.

While stronger-than expected August manufacturing output data released earlier Friday suggest that Singapore’s economy may fare far better than initially anticipated at the height of the global downturn, economists say the Monetary Authority of Singapore is likely to retain a neutral stance for the local dollar when it issues its semiannual policy statement in October.

Barclays Capital economist Wai Ho Leong said in a report that the U.S. dollar will continue to drift toward S$1.40 by the end of this year.

Local government bonds were little changed, with no firm cues to trade on ahead of a S$2.2 billion, five-year government bonds auction Monday.

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