The gross international reserves recovered in July to $106.55 billion following a drop in June, data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas show.
Forex reserves increased by $790 million from $105.76 billion in June, reflecting the inflows from the national government’s net foreign currency deposits with the BSP, which included proceeds from the issuance of ROP global bonds and upward adjustment in the value of the gold holdings due to the increase in the price of gold in the international market.
“These were partly offset, however, by the outflows from the national government’s payments of its foreign currency debt obligations and the BSP’s foreign exchange operations,” the BSP said.
Data showed that on a year-on-year basis, the GIR also went up from $98.6 billion registered in July 2020. The reserves hit a record high of $110.1 billion in December last year, before tapering off in the subsequent months as the government settled some of its maturing foreign debt.
The BSP said the latest GIR level represented a more than adequate external liquidity buffer equivalent to 12.1 months’ worth of imports of goods and payments of services and primary income.
It is also about 7.7 times the country’s short-term external debt based on original maturity and 5.1 times based on residual maturity.
Meanwhile, the net international reserves, which refer to the difference between the GIR and total short-term liabilities, increased $790 million to $106.55 billion as of end-July from $105.76 billion in the previous month.
The strong GIR level is one of the factors considered by international credit rating agencies for keeping their investment-grade rating on the Philippines this year.