Foreign reserves fall 2.3% from a month earlier

The Monetary Authority of Macao has announced that the preliminary estimate of the SAR’s foreign exchange reserves amounted to 176.6 billion patacas at the end of March 2020.
The reserves decreased by 2.3% from the revised value of 180.7 billion for the previous month, according to the Monetary Authority.
The SAR’s foreign exchange reserves at the end of the first quarter represented 10 times the currency in circulation at the end of February 2020.
The trade-weighted effective exchange rate index for the pataca dropped 0.12 points in month-to-month terms but rose 2.90 points year-on-year to 108.5 in March. This implies that overall speaking, the exchange rate of the pataca declined against the currencies of Macau’s major trading partners on a monthly basis but increased on an annual basis. DB