Philippines’ dollar reserves slightly declined and relatively stable at $107.67 billion as of end-November from $107.89 billion in end-October, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said.

Compared to same period in 2020 of $104.81 billion, the country’s gross international reserves (GIR) increased by $2.85 billion year-on-year.
The BSP said thet latest GIR level continue to be “more than adequate external liquidity buffer equivalent” and is equivalent to 10.2 months’ worth of imports of goods and payments of services and primary income. “Moreover, it is also about 8.7 times the country’s short-term external debt based on original maturity and 5.7 times based on residual maturity,” said the BSP.
The decrease in the GIR level in November versus October was due to the National Government’s (NG) foreign currency withdrawals from the BSP “as the NG settled its foreign currency debt obligations and paid for various expenditures,” said the BSP.
The drop in the international prices of gold also contributed to the slight decrease in the GIR, month-on-month.
As of end-November, the GIR’s gold composition amounted to $9 billion, down from end-October’s $9.13 billion. In the meantime, BSP’s foreign investments during the period amounted to $91.49 billion, up from the previous month’s $19.19 billion.
In a Dec. 9 Monetary Board meeting, the BSP revised the GIR projection for 2021 lower to $111 billion compared to an earlier estimate (September 16) of $114 billion.
The BSP also revised lower the 2022 GIR projection of $115 billion to just $112 billion.
The central bank said the emerging 2021 GIR is lower than earlier anticipated due to the “use of reserves to pay foreign currency obligations and various expenditures.”
The BSP received fresh SDR or special drawing rights’ liquidity from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last August 23 amounting to $2.78 billion. The credit raised the SDR reserves to $3.99 billion. The amount was the Philippines’ share of the $650 billion additional SDRs issued by the IMF as global liquidity assistance.
Before the fresh SDR allocation, the GIR has an existing SDR component of $1.22 billion which was first distributed to the Philippines in 2009 as funding support during the Global Financial Crisis.
The latest additional SDRs “have bolstered the GIR (and it) further strengthened the Philippines’ resilience against external shocks,” said Diokno in a previous statement.