The central bank borrowed another short-term, reserves-related loan worth $574.7 million in January, based on Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) data.
The loan is considered gross international reserves (GIR) liabilities. This was not the first time that BSP took out GIR-related loans.
As of end-January this year, the country's GIR amounted to $103.406 billion, lower compared to end-December 2023's $103.753 billion due to payments of maturing government loans.
Last October 2023, the BSP also borrowed $734 million and $848.4 million in November last year. Both loans were prepaid by December.
The BSP said the GIR loan was due mainly to central bank reserve management operations. No further explanation was provided.
In January, the net international reserves (NIR) which is the difference between the BSP’s reserve assets or the GIR and reserve liabilities or short-term foreign debt and credit and loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), declined by $900 million to $102.831 billion from end-December’s $103.725 billion.
As described by the BSP, NIR includes gold monetization and revaluation of reserve assets and reserve-related liabilities that are not part of the country’s balance of payments. It is also the difference between the GIR and short-term liabilities and the Use of Fund Credits (UFC) which are “the sum of outstanding drawings from the IMF under various policies and facilities, other than drawings under the reserve tranche.”
Before October 2023, based on available data, the BSP has not increased its GIR-related liabilities in the last 10 years since the data only goes back to 2013.
The BSP as creditor-member of the IMF has a total commitment of $2.26 billion as of end-2022 in various IMF facilities as standby resources, up from $1.8 billion in 2021.