South Korea's foreign exchange reserves fell by 3.53 billion U.S. dollars in September mainly due to the U.S. dollar supply by the foreign exchange authorities in their effort to ease financial jitters, the nation's central bank said Thursday
According to the Bank of Korea (BOK), as of the end of September the nation's foreign reserves amounted 239.7 billion U.S. dollars, down from 243.2 billion U.S. dollar in August.
From this April, the foreign exchange reserves fell for the sixth straight month until September.
"Despite higher investment profits, foreign reserves fell in September as foreign exchange authorities injected more dollars into the swap market in a bid to ease financial market jitters sparked by the global credit crunch," the central bank said. "A stronger U.S. dollar also brought down the dollar conversion value of assets in other currencies like the euro."
However, despite the massive dollar sales by the financial authorities to prop up the won, the local currency has declined more than 21 percent against the dollar so far this year.
Meanwhile, South Korea posted the world's sixth-largest holder of foreign exchange reserves as of the end of August, according to the nation's Yonhap news agency.
China held the world's largest foreign reserves, worth 1.81 trillion U.S. dollars followed by Japan and Russia with 996.7 billion U.S. dollars and 581.6 billion U.S. dollars, respectively, Yonhap said, adding that India ranked fourth with 295.3 billion U.S. dollars.
Source: Xinhua
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