The gross international reserves increased to $108.54 billion at the end of March 2022 from $107.8 billion in February, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas said Friday.
It said the latest GIR level represented more than adequate external liquidity buffer equivalent to 9.6 months’ worth of imports of goods and payments of services and primary income.
There were also about 7.2 times the country’s short-term external debt based on original maturity and 5.4 times based on residual maturity.
“The month-on-month increase in the GIR level reflected mainly the national government’s net foreign currency deposits with the BSP, which include proceeds from its issuance of ROP global bonds, and the BSP’s net income from its investments abroad,” the BSP said.
Data also show that net international reserves, which refer to the difference between the BSP’s reserve assets and reserve liabilities went up by $0.74 billion to $108.53 billion as of end-March from $107.79 billion in the previous month.
Michael Ricafort, chief economist of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., said the GIR could still post new record highs in the coming months amid the continued growth in structural inflows from OFW remittances, BPO revenues, foreign tourism revenues, and foreign investment inflows.
He said most of the structural inflows “were among record highs or pre-pandemic highs recently [except for foreign tourism revenues that could gradually resume, after almost absent since the pandemic started 2 years ago] and considered bright spots for the Philippine economy.”
He said this could happen alongside proceeds of fund-raising/investment banking activities especially those from abroad though the widening trend in the country’s trade deficit/net imports and some net foreign debt payments would offset some of these inflows.
“Thus, near record-high GIR and prospects of reaching new record highs in the coming months could further strengthen the country’s external position, which is a key pillar for the country’s continued favorable credit ratings for the second straight year, mostly at one to three notches above the minimum investment grade, a sign of resilience despite the COVID-19 pandemic that caused downgrades in other countries around the world,” Ricafort said.