KUALA LUMPUR (July 7): Malaysia's international reserves have continued to climb, reaching a new decade-high peak at the end of June, according to the latest data from Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM).
As of June 30, the country's foreign exchange reserves rose US$700 million (RM2.9 billion) to US$120.6 billion, BNM's statement on Monday showed, compared to its previous decade-high peak of US$119.9 billion in mid-June.
The current reserves position is sufficient to finance 4.8 months of imports of goods and services and is equivalent to 0.9 times the total short-term external debt.
Short-term external debt comprises borrowings from non-residents with a maturity of one year or less. These borrowings are primarily by resident banks for their foreign currency liquidity operations, as well as by multinational corporations, including foreign banks, borrowing from their overseas parents or headquarters. These borrowings 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.
Among components of the reserves, foreign currency reserves edged up to US$107 billion from US$106.7 billion as at June-end, while Malaysia’s reserve position with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) remained steady at US$1.3 billion.
Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), which are IMF-allocated reserve assets based on a basket of major currencies, increased marginally to US$5.9 billion from US$5.8 billion, while the central bank's gold holdings rose to US$4.1 billion from US$4 billion.
Other reserve assets remained unchanged at US$2.3 billion.