South Korea's FX reserves fall to 8-month low

South Korea's foreign exchange reserves fell to an eight-month low of US$362.19 billion as of the end of January as the currency value of the euro and the British pound weakened, the central bank said on Wednesday.

The figure represents a decrease of $1.41 billion from a month earlier.

Securities accounted for a dominant 92.4 percent or $334.62 billion of the total foreign reserve holdings, a drop of $7.06 billion from a month earlier, the Bank of Korea (BOK) said.

Others included deposits of $17.72 billion, $4.79 billion in gold, SDRs of $3.19 billion and the country’s IMF reserve position of $1.86 billion.

As of the end of December, South Korea remained at No. 7 in the world in terms of foreign exchange reserves.

China and Japan retained their No. 1 and No. 2 spots with $3,843.0 billion and $1,260.5 billion, respectively.

Saudi Arabia ranked third with $732.4 billion, followed by Switzerland ($545.4 billion), Taiwan ($419.0 billion) and Russia (385.5 billion). Brazil was ranked eighth with $351.7 billion after South Korea.

Park Sae-jin swatchsjp@ajunews.com