The Bank of Korea has announced it will stop publishing rankings of foreign exchange reserves, citing the difficulty in attributing significance to rankings that are unrelated to external soundness.
In a press release on September 3, the Bank stated, "The international ranking of foreign exchange reserves is a simple comparative statistic that does not control for the heterogeneity of economic size and external positions among countries," adding that it has "minimal analytical value."
On the same day, the Bank disclosed the size of its foreign exchange reserves but removed the country-specific ranking data that had been provided monthly. This marks the first time in 25 years and six months that South Korea's global ranking has not been presented separately since the end of February 2001.
In 2001, the Bank first published the names and sizes of the top 10 countries by foreign exchange reserves. Until last month, it had included South Korea's ranking alongside the reserves of major countries in its press releases.
However, the Bank did not inform the public about this change or its rationale through the main text of the data, additional explanatory materials, or briefings.
The Bank clarified, "It is not true that we deleted the foreign exchange reserves ranking from our press release to hide unfavorable information from the foreign exchange authorities. If needed, one can obtain and process data from the IMF database and individual central bank websites to calculate the rankings directly."
As of the end of last year, South Korea maintained its position as the ninth largest holder of foreign exchange reserves globally, but it fell to tenth in January and twelfth in February. By the end of May, it had dropped to thirteenth, before climbing back to tenth by the end of June. It remained in tenth place as of the end of July.
As of the end of August, South Korea's foreign exchange reserves stood at $442.28 billion, a significant increase of $14.33 billion from $427.95 billion at the end of July. This marks the largest increase on record.
The reserves have risen for three consecutive months since June. However, they are still below the all-time high of $469.21 billion recorded in October 2021.
A Bank official explained, "The substantial increase is attributed to a significant rise in foreign currency deposits by financial institutions, along with gains from operations and the increased value of non-dollar foreign currency assets."
* This article has been translated by AI.
Copyright ⓒ Aju Press All rights reserved.