China’s forex reserves shrink to US$3.23 trillion

Central bank

BEIJING: China’s foreign-exchange reserves shrank to the smallest since 2012, indicating that the central bank sold US dollars as the yuan’s retreat to a five-year low exacerbated depreciation pressure.

The world’s largest currency hoard declined by US$99.5bil in January to US$3.23 trillion, according to a People’s Bank of China (PBoC) statement released yesterday. The drop was less than a Bloomberg survey’s median estimate of a US$120bil loss. The stockpile fell by more than half a trillion dollars in 2015, the first-ever annual decline.