KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 7): Malaysia's international reserves dipped slightly in October after the central bank accumulated the biggest hoard in nearly a decade.

The latest international reserves totalled US$117.6 billion as at Oct 30 this year, from US$119.6 billion as at Oct 15, 2024, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) said in a statement on Thursday. BNM releases data on foreign exchange reserves every two weeks.

The reserves position is sufficient to finance 4.8 months of imports of goods and services, and is 0.9 times the total short-term external debt, BNM said.

The short-term external debt comprises borrowings from non-residents with maturity of one year or less, mostly by resident banks for their foreign currency liquidity operations as well as multinational corporations, including foreign banks, borrowing from their overseas parents or headquarters.

“These obligations can be met in the normal course of operations from their external asset holdings, and do not pose any claims on BNM's international reserves,” the central bank noted.

Among the main components, foreign currency reserves fell to US$104.6 billion from US$106.6 billion while the reserves position at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was unchanged at US$1.3 billion.

Special drawing rights — reserve assets maintained by the IMF based on a basket of currencies — were also stable at US$5.9 billion, and there was no change in value of its gold holdings at US$3.3 billion.

Other reserve assets were flat at US$2.5 billion.