The country’s gross international reserves increased by $810 million in March to hit an all-time high of $89 billion from $88.19 billion in February, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas said Thursday.
It said the month-on-month increase in the reserves level reflected inflows arising from foreign exchange operations, income from its investments abroad and the national government’s foreign currency deposits with the BSP.
“These inflows were partly offset, however, by payments made by the national government for servicing its foreign currency debt obligations,” the BSP said.
“At this level, the GIR can cover 7.9 months’ worth of imports of goods and services and payments of primary income,” the BSP said.
“It is also equivalent to 5.3 times the country’s short-term external debt based on original maturity and 3.8 times based on residual maturity.”
The GIR hit the record level despite the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 which was expected to reduce remittances flows from Filipinos working overseas. The World Bank predicted that global remittances could decline by more than 20 percent in 2020.
Data showed that on a year-on-year basis, the GIR climbed 6.4 percent from $83.613 billion recorded in March 2019.
The country’s foreign reserves have been rising over the past two years over narrowing trade deficit, as exports grew faster than imports.
Net international reserves, which refer to the difference between the GIR and total short-term liabilities, also increased to $88.99 billion as of end-March 2020 from $88.18 billion in February.
Reserves ended 2019 at $87.84 billion and surpassed the $85 billion projected by the BSP for the year. The end-2019 reserves also surpassed the end-2018 reserves of $79.2 billion.
The BSP expects the GIR to settle at $86 billion by end-2020.