Taiwan's Forex Reserves Slightly Down to US$423B. in August

Taiwan's foreign exchange reserves slightly dropped US$595 million from a month earlier to US$423.066 billion in August, yet making Taiwan remain the world's fourth largest holder of forex reserves, next to China, Japan and Russia, according to Taiwan's central bank.

The central bank attributes the shrinkage in forex reserves in August to the net outflow of US$216 million during the month and depreciation of foreign currencies held by the bank including the euro, the British pound, the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan (renminbi), which depreciated against the U.S. dollar in the month by 1.67%, 1.77%, 0.92% and 0.51%, respectively.

In the same month foreign investors overbought Taiwan's stocks of NT$46.7 billion (US$1.56 billion), resulting in Taiwan's stock, bonds and NT-dollar deposits held by foreigners to total US$302.8 billion, accounting for 72% of the total forex reserves and being the highest of their kinds.

In August South Korea's forex reserves dropped US$500 million from a month earlier to US$367.5 billion and Russia's stood at US$465.8 billion, plummeting by over US$10 billion from that at the end of June, due mainly to risk-averse-driven outflow of foreign funds amid geopolitical tensions between Russia and Ukraine.

In July Kong Kong's foreign reserves rose a monthly US$4.1 billion to US$325 billion while Japan, Singapore and India saw respective falls of US$7.9 billion, US$4.3 billion and US$1.2 billion in forex reserves. (JL)