The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said on Monday that the BOP deficit in January reflected outflows arising mainly from the national government's payments of its foreign currency debt obligations.
"The BOP position reflects a decrease in the final gross international reserves (GIR) level to 103.3 billion dollars as of end-January 2024 from 103.8 billion dollars as of end-December 2023," the BSP said.
Notwithstanding the decline, the BSP said the latest GIR level represents a more than adequate external liquidity buffer equivalent to 7.7 months' worth of imports of goods and payments of services and primary income.
Moreover, it is also about six times the country's short-term external debt based on original maturity and 3.9 times based on residual maturity.
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