The country’s gross international reserves (GIR), an indicator of capacity to pay for trade and debt obligations, rose to $99.7 billion as of end-January 2023 from the end-December 2022 level of $96.1 billion.
The GIR level, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said, represents a more than adequate external liquidity buffer equivalent to 7.5 months’ worth of imports of goods and payments of services and primary income. The global norm requires only three months’ worth of foreign exchange reserves.
The reserves were also estimated to equal six times the country’s short-term external debt based on original maturity and 4.0 times based on residual maturity.
The month-on-month increase in the GIR level reflected mainly the National Government’s (NG) net foreign currency deposits with the BSP, which include proceeds from its issuance of ROP global bonds, the upward valuation adjustments in the value of the BSP’s gold holdings due to the increase in the price of gold in the international market, and net income from the BSP’s investments abroad.
Similarly, the net international reserves, which refers to the difference between the BSP’s reserve assets (GIR) and reserve liabilities (short-term foreign debt and credit and loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)), increased by $3.6 billion to $99.7 billion as of end-January 2023 from the end-December 2022 level of $96.1 billion.
