The Philippines continue to accumulate dollar reserves with the end-October 2011 level surging by 33 percent year-on-year due to higher inflows of remittances and business process outsourcing (BPO) income among others.
Data released by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) showed that gross international reserves (GIR) as of last October reached US$ 75.81 billion, way higher from year-ago’s US$ 57.15 billion. Month-on- month, it grew by .85 percent from last September’s US$ 75.17 billion.
“The appreciable build-up in the reserves level at end-October 2011 resulted mainly from the foreign exchange operations and income from investments abroad of the BSP as well as revaluation gains on the BSP’s gold holdings,” BSP Governor Amando Tetangco Jr. said.
The central bank chief, however, said that the inflows were countered partly by the National Government’s (NG) maturing foreign denominated liabilities.
Tetangco said the dollar reserves at the end of the 10th month this year could cover 11.2 percent months worth of goods and payments of services and income.
He said the current foreign reserves is also equivalent to 10.6 times that country’s short-term foreign liabilities based on original maturity and 6.4 times based on residual maturity, which the central bank defines as the “outstanding external debt with original maturity of one year or less, plus principal payments on medium and long-term loans of the public and private sectors falling due within the next 12 months.”
Relatively, the country’s net international reserves (NIR), which include revaluation of reserve assets, jumped by US$ 0.6 billion to US$ 75.8 billion as of last October from month-ago’s US$ 75.2 billion. [PNA]
