Foreign taking of Govt. debt tops $ 1 b
Central Bank last week revealed that total net foreign inflows to the government T-bills and T-bonds since mid May 2009 has amounted to US$ 1.214 billion.
This disclosure was made as part of Central Bank’s statement on latest external trade data.
It said that the foreign exchange inflows have also responded favourably to the positive outlook brought about by the end to the three decades of conflict and approval of a Stand-by Arrangement (SBA) facility by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Mopping up
Central Bank said it was also in the process of building up its official reserves to a more comfortable level by absorbing excess foreign exchange from the market. Since end March 2009, upto September 9, it has absorbed US dollars 1.955 billion from the market |
Whilst foreign investment into Government bills and bonds had topped US$ 1 billion, the Central Bank said it was also in the process of building up its official reserves to a more comfortable level by absorbing excess foreign exchange from the market.
“Since end March 2009, upto September 9, it has absorbed US dollars 1.955 billion from the market,” the Bank added. In addition, with the approval of the new general and special allocations of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) by IMF on August 28, and September 9, 2009, respectively, Sri Lanka has received SDR 324.6 million (approximately US dollars 508 million) and thereby the foreign reserves held by the CBSL have improved significantly. Accordingly, gross official reserves (without ACU) has been estimated to exceed US dollars 4 billion by September 10 2009.
In end July 2009, the gross official reserves, with and without Asian Clearing Union (ACU) funds, recorded US dollars 2,278.1 million and US dollars 2,189.3 million, respectively. Based on the previous 12 month average imports (US dollars 924 million per month), these reserve values were equivalent to 2.5 and 2.4 months of imports, respectively.
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