Taiwan's Forex Reserves Again Hit Record High of US$421.495B in April

Thanks to continuing net inflow of foreign funds, Taiwan's foreign exchange reserves increased by US$2.296 billion from a month earlier to hit the fifth consecutive monthly record high of US$421.495 billion in April, according to the central bank.

The central bank attributes such increase to interest income of the revenues, the revenue from forex investments, and additional book income from the holdings of the euro, the British pound and the Japanese yen, which appreciated, respectively, by 0.36%, 1% and 0.46%, in value against the greenback.

In the same month Taiwan's stocks, bonds and NT-dollar deposits held by foreigners amounted to US$268.1 billion for a monthly rise of US$10.3 billion,  and accounted for 64% of the total forex reserves, the second highest of its kind , next only to the corresponding 66% recorded in January of 2011.

An official at the central bank indicates that Taiwan witnessed a net inflow of US$5.098 billion in foreign capital in April for the eighth consecutive monthly inflow since September 2013, a new monthly high in 55 months. Over the past eight months, the net inflow totaled  US$18.8 billion, which helped boost the accumulated net inflow to a record high of US$186.381 billion or about NT$5.6 trillion as of the end of April.

Today Taiwan has remained the world's fourth largest holder of forex reserves, next to China, Japan and Russia. As of the end of March,  China's forex reserves showed a quarterly rise of US$126.8 billion to reach US$3.9481 trillion and Japan's forex reserves decreased by US$8.9 billion from the end of February to US$1.2793 trillion. Russia experienced a slight monthly fall of US$3.4 billion to US$482.7 billion at the end of April. (JL)