The gross international reserves of the Philippines climbed to a six-month high of $101.1 billion in October from $98.1 billion in September, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas said Wednesday.
“The month-on-month increase in the GIR level reflected mainly the national government’s net foreign currency deposits with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, which include proceeds from its issuance of Retail Onshore Dollar Bonds 2 [RDB 2],” it said in a statement.
Other factors that contributed to the GIR’s increase were the upward valuation adjustments in the BSP’s gold holdings on increased prices of gold in the international market and the BSP’s net foreign exchange operations and net income from its investments abroad, it said.
“The latest GIR level 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 BSP said.
It was also about 5.9 times the country’s short-term external debt based on original maturity and 3.7 times based on residual maturity.
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), increased $2.3 billion to $100.4 billion as of end-October from $98.1 billion a month earlier.