The country’s gross international reserves (GIR), a measure of capacity to pay for foreign loans and external trade obligations, stood at USD102.5 billion, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas said.
The GIR, which topped USD110 billion three years earlier, stood USD500 million higher than only USD102.7 billion the previous November, the BSP said citing preliminary data.
The latest GIR level represents a more than adequate external liquidity buffer equivalent to 7.7 months’ worth of imports of goods and payments of services and primary income. Moreover, it is also about 6.0 times the country’s short-term external debt based on original maturity and 3.8 times based on residual maturity, the BSP said.
The decrease in GIR was traced to pay downs by the national government’s (NG) payment on its foreign currency debt obligations.
As a result, the net international reserves, or the difference between the BSP’s reserve assets and reserve liabilities (short-term foreign debt and credit and loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)), increased by USD500 million to USD102.4 billion as of end-December 2023 from the end-November 2023 level of USD101.9 billion.
