Foreign Exchange Reserves Decline for 3 Consecutive Months... Drop One Rank to 9th in the World

[Image source=Yonhap News]

South Korea's foreign exchange reserves decreased by approximately 1.59 billion dollars in one month, marking a decline for three consecutive months. The global ranking of foreign exchange reserves dropped one step from 8th to 9th place.

According to the 'End of May Foreign Exchange Reserves' statistics released by the Bank of Korea on the 7th, South Korea's foreign exchange reserves stood at 447.71 billion dollars, down 1.59 billion dollars compared to the end of the previous month. This is the lowest level in 1 year and 2 months since March last year (446.1 billion dollars).

The foreign exchange reserves have decreased for three consecutive months, following 461.766 billion dollars in February, 457.81 billion dollars in March, and 449.298 billion dollars in April.

The Bank of Korea explained that although the US dollar weakened compared to the previous month, increasing the dollar-converted value of foreign currency assets in other currencies, the foreign exchange reserves decreased due to measures to ease volatility in the foreign exchange market. The dollar index (DXY), which indicates the value of the dollar against the six major currencies, fell by 1.9% from 103.62 at the end of April to 101.67 at the end of May.

Looking at the assets, deposits (21.86 billion dollars) increased by 5.61 billion dollars, and the IMF position (4.48 billion dollars), which is the drawing right of exchangeable currency to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and Special Drawing Rights (SDR, 15.08 billion dollars) also increased by 30 million dollars and 100 million dollars respectively, but securities such as government bonds and corporate bonds (401.49 billion dollars) sharply decreased by 7.33 billion dollars compared to the previous month.

As of the end of April, South Korea's foreign exchange reserves ranked 9th in the world, falling behind Saudi Arabia.

China had the largest reserves at 3.1197 trillion dollars, followed by Japan (1.3222 trillion dollars), Switzerland (1.0318 trillion dollars), India (596.7 billion dollars), Russia (593.1 billion dollars), Taiwan (545.1 billion dollars), Hong Kong (465.7 billion dollars), and Saudi Arabia (451.6 billion dollars).

(Data provided by Bank of Korea)

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.