Most Asian currencies ended the first week of May down as dollar bulls were hesitant to loosen their grip despite a soft non-farm payroll data from the United States on Friday.
Among East Asian currencies, the Malaysian ringgit and Singapore dollar suffered the most with 2.4% and 1.3% slide respectively, on the week against their US counterpart.
Both the units had traded at multi-month highs vs the US dollar in the third week of April from where they have now distanced significantly.
At close of Friday, the Singapore dollar traded at 1.3624/US dollar while the Malaysian ringgit was at an over one-month low of 4.0085/USD.
The Singdollar had traded at a 10-month high of 1.3350 two weeks ago from where it has now weakened more than 2%. The ringgit had fetched an eight-month high of 3.8405 last month.
The Thai baht fell 0.7% to 35.15/USD while the Indonesian rupiah was down 0.45% to 13,245.
The Indian and Chinese currencies had not fallen much with 0.18% and 0.35% drops to 66.56/USD and 6.4973/USD respectively. The Hong Kong dollar was little changed against the US unit this week.
As per Friday's data, US non-farm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 160,000 in April, the weakest gain since September and way below most of the forecasts near 200,000 addition.
However, the report showed there was a 2.5% advance in wages compared with a year earlier, a firmer gain than March's increase.
Analysts said the report did not impact the interest rate scenario of the world's largest economy which is on a cautious hiking path.
The greenback ended 0.96% higher versus the yen, o.4% up against the euro and rallied 3% against the Australian dollar in the NFP week.
