THE surge in gold prices in the international market increased the country’s dollar reserves in February, according to preliminary data released by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) on Tuesday.
The data showed the country’s gross international reserves (GIR) level increased to $107.98 billion as of end-February 2022 from the end-January 2022 level of $107.69 billion.
This GIR level is equivalent to 10.2 months’ worth of imports of goods and payments of services and primary income.
“The month-on-month increase in the GIR level reflected mainly the upward adjustment in the value of the BSP’s gold holdings due to the increase in the price of gold in the international market and the BSP’s net income from its investments abroad,” BSP said in a statement.
Broken down, the country’s gold holdings grew to $9.585 billion, the highest since May 2021 when gold holdings reached $9.907 billion.
The country’s GIR consisted predominantly of foreign investments, which hit $93.107 billion in February—up from $92.9 billion in January.
“It [GIR] is also about 8.4 times the country’s short-term external debt based on original maturity and 5.8 times based on residual maturity,” the BSP added.
The BSP also said the net international reserves (NIR) increased by $0.29 billion to $107.97 billion as of end-February 2022 from the end-January 2022 level of $107.68 billion.
The NIR refers to the difference between the BSP’s reserve assets (GIR) and reserve liabilities or short-term foreign debt and credit and loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).