October GIR hits $85.7B

The country’s foreign currency reserves or gross international reserves (GIR) expanded yet again in October, latest data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) show.

“Preliminary data show that the country’s (GIR) rose by $0.12 billion to $85.7 billion as of end-October 2019 from $85.58 billion as of end-September 2019,” the BSP said.

The central bank traced this development to inflows from both the national government’s (NG) foreign currency deposits and the BSP’s investments abroad.

“However, the increase in reserves was tempered by payments made by the NG for servicing its foreign exchange obligations,” the BSP said.

Further, the central bank said the country’s dollar reserves are ample external liquidity buffer and equates to 7.5 months’ worth of imports of goods and services and payment of primary income.

Likewise, the October GIR translates to 5.5 times the country’s short-term external debt based on original maturity and 4.1 times based on residual maturity.

Meanwhile, the central bank’s gold holdings stood at $8.01 billion, registering the same figure from gold holdings in September.

The net international reserves, which nets out short-term debt, was better by $0.12 billion to $85.69 billion as of end-October 2019 from the end-September 2019 level of $85.57 billion.