THE country’s gross international reserves declined to an 11-month low of $81.045 billion at the end of December 2016, missing the recently revised target of $83.7 billion for the year, data from Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas on Friday show.
Bangko Sentral Governor Amando Tetangco Jr. attributed the drop mainly to “outflows arising from payments made by the national government for its maturing foreign exchange obligations, foreign exchange operations of the BSP, and revaluation adjustments on the BSP’s gold holdings resulting from the decrease in the price of gold in the international market.”
He said these were partially offset by the national government’s net foreign currency deposits, along with Bangko Sentral’s income from investments abroad.
The December GIR was the lowest since January 2016, when it settled at $80.692 billion. It was also lower by $0.40 billion than the end-November GIR of $81.45 billion, but higher by $0.38 billion compared with the end-December 2015 figure of $80.67 billion.
Tetangco said the December 2016 level remained adequate and could cover 9.2 months’ worth of imports of goods and payments of services and primary income. It was also equivalent to 5.8 times the country’s short-term external debt based on original maturity and 4.2 time based on residual maturity.
Net international reserves, which refer to the difference between Bangko Sentral’s GIR and total short-term liabilities, decreased $0.40 billion to $81.03 billion as of end-December, compared with the end-November 2016 NIR of $81.43 billion.
Data showed that the value of Bangko Sentral’s gold holdings in December declined to $7.259 billion from $7.402 billion a month ago.