The gross international reserves climbed to $82.9 billion in February, the highest in 28 months, boosted by the inflows from the foreign exchange operations of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
The BSP said in a statement Thursday the other reasons for the higher reserves were the income it generated from its investments abroad and the net foreign currency deposits by the national government.
“However, the increase in reserves was partially tempered by payments made by the national government for servicing its foreign exchange obligations as well as revaluation losses from the BSP’s gold holdings, resulting from the decrease in the price of gold in the international market,” it said.
“The end-February 2019 level of GIR serves as an ample external liquidity buffer and is equivalent to 7.3 months’ worth of imports of goods and payments of services and primary income,” it said.
The amount is also equivalent to 6.3 times the country’s short-term external debt based on original maturity and 4.1 times based on residual maturity.
Net international reserves which refer to the difference between the GIR and total short-term liabilities, also increased by $410 million to $82.89 billion as of end-February 2019 from the end-January 2019 level of $82.48 billion.
Reserves hit an all-time high of $86.139 billion in September 2016.
The Bangko Sentral said it was expecting the GIR to settle at $77 billion in 2019.