Gain US$4.83 Bil. to Reach US$447.56 Bil.

South Korea’s foreign exchange reserves gained US$4.83 billion last month to reach an all-time high of US$447.56 billion.

The Bank of Korea announced on March 4 that South Korea’s foreign exchange reserves increased US$4.83 billion to an all-time high of US$447.56 billion last month. The reserves set new records for seven months in a row from June to December last year, showed some decrease in January this year, and rebounded last month.

Last month, the central bank succeeded in increasing the revenue from its foreign currency-denominated assets while the U.S. dollar depreciated to result in an increase in the value of its foreign currency assets converted to the U.S. dollar and the increase in the reserves. The USD Index, which shows the value of the USD in comparison to six major currencies, fell 0.4 percent from 90.46 to 90.13 during the period.
 

Marketable securities such as government and government agency bonds and asset-backed securities increased US$5.06 billion to US$409.63 billion. Deposits in foreign central banks and major global banks fell US$250 million to US$24.74 billion. The gold reserves remained at US$4.79 billion.
 

As of the end of January, South Korea ranked ninth in the world in terms of the size of foreign exchange reserves. China topped the list with US$3.2107 trillion, followed by Japan (US$1.3921 trillion), Switzerland (US$1.0788 trillion) and Russia (US$590.7 billion).
 

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