GIR held steady above $100B in April, says BSP

The Philippines’ gross international reserves (GIR) may have decreased to $101.51 billion at the end April, mainly due to government payment of foreign debt.

Preliminary data at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) show that the GIR remained above the $100-billion mark for the second month in a row after sinking to $98.22 billion in February.

The tentative tally for April is about $37 million less than the $101.55 billion recorded at the end of March.

“The lower GIR level in April reflected mainly the national government’s payments of its foreign currency debt obligations,” the BSP said in a statement.

Also, the BSP said the GIR remained more than an adequate external liquidity buffer, equivalent to 7.6 months’ worth of imports of goods and payments of services and primary income.

The GIR is considered adequate if it can finance at least three-months’ worth of the country’s import bill. As of April, such reserves were more than twice the minimum adequate amount.

Further, the reserves were also about 5.9 times the country’s short-term external debt based on original maturity and 4.1 times based on residual maturity.

—Ronnel W. Domingo INQ