COLOMBO – Sri Lanka’s forex reserves fell marginally to 5,649 million dollars in July 2024 from 5,654 million US dollars in June, official data show.
In June the central bank sold about 57 million US dollars in the interbank market after a spike in liquidity from earlier strong dollar purchases and a rise in private credit. July data is not available.
In August there have been dollar purchases on some days, market participants said, with the excess liquidity mostly extinguished.
Similar trends were seen in June and July of 2023 after steep collections in earlier months. A reluctance to maintain the exchange rate when pressure comes from excess liquidity-driven credit leads to a confidence shock to market participants, analysts have pointed out.
At the current interest rate structure, the central bank has collected foreign reserves and also paid down its own borrowings leading to a steady improvement of its net reserve position.
Sri Lanka’s gross foreign reserves include gross monetary reserves of the central bank and government balances which are usually made up of foreign loan receipts.
The central bank borrowed dollars to suppress rates up to mid-2033 after rate cuts enforced with inflationary open market operations led to forex shortages. Central reserve sales which do not lead to rate rises, require more money printing.
Inflationary operations are used to target inflation as high as 5% despite having a reserve collecting central banks. Analysts have warned that precipitate rate cuts to target inflation will lead to lower reserve collections and eventually missed reserve targets.
-economynext.com
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