Foreign Exchange Reserves Decrease for the First Time in Four Months Due to Strong US Dollar... $4.68 Billion Drop in February

Last month, South Korea's foreign exchange reserves decreased by nearly 5 billion dollars, marking a decline after four months of growth.

According to the foreign exchange reserves statistics released by the Bank of Korea on the 6th, as of the end of February, the foreign exchange reserves stood at 425.29 billion dollars, down 4.68 billion dollars from the end of the previous month. The reserves had shown an increase for three consecutive months since November last year but turned to a decline last month.

The Bank of Korea explained, "The foreign exchange reserves decreased due to a reduction in the US dollar conversion amount of foreign currency assets in other currencies and foreign currency deposits of financial institutions."

Last month, the US dollar appreciated by about 2.3% (based on the US Dollar Index), meaning that the foreign currency assets converted into US dollars decreased accordingly.

Breaking down the foreign exchange reserves by asset type, securities such as government bonds and corporate bonds (374.49 billion dollars) increased by 3.07 billion dollars compared to the previous month.

Deposits (26.75 billion dollars) decreased by 7.42 billion dollars, and Special Drawing Rights (SDR, 14.8 billion dollars) and the IMF position, which is the withdrawal right of exchangeable currency to the International Monetary Fund (44.4 billion dollars), also decreased by 250 million dollars and 90 million dollars respectively.

Gold is recorded at the purchase price without reflecting market prices, so it remained at 4.79 billion dollars, the same as the previous month. The Bank of Korea has not purchased gold for 10 years since February 2013.

As of the end of January, South Korea's foreign exchange reserves ranked 9th in the world.

China had the largest reserves at 3.1845 trillion dollars, followed by Japan (1.2502 trillion dollars), Switzerland (930.1 billion dollars), Russia (597 billion dollars), India (574.4 billion dollars), Taiwan (557.1 billion dollars), Saudi Arabia (457.2 billion dollars), and Hong Kong (436.5 billion dollars).