Amid economic headwinds, BNM's Zeti will be a hard act to follow

MALAYSIA's top central bank post will have an untimely void at the end of April when the widely respected governor of 16 years, Zeti Akhtar Aziz, retires - raising questions (and heightened scrutiny) on who will replace her at the helm of Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM).

"It feels like the end of an era," said OCBC Bank in a note as Dr Zeti attended her last monetary policy meeting a week ago at which the central bank, expectedly, kept the policy rate unchanged .

The appointment of the new central bank chief is especially pivotal now given the headwinds faced by Malaysia's oil and gas-reliant economy. Falling oil prices have hit the country's coffers - although oil revenue no longer makes up one-third of government revenue, it is still significant - and exports are falling. The government has said that for every US$1 drop in oil prices, the government's annual reven…