Vietnam’s forex reserves reach record-high
Vietnam’s foreign exchange reserves by early 2016 had reached the record high of US$38 billion, which does not include reserves in gold.
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However, analysts can estimate Vietnam’s forex reserves by referring to two reports by the US Treasury and the 2015 Asian Development Bank and comparing the statistics there.
In principle, the forex reserves of a country are put under control by the country’s central bank and they are in different types of assets, including cash and deposits in hard currencies (US dollar, British pound, Euro, yen, gold) and valuable papers (government bonds, bills and other securities).
The ADB’s latest report showed that Vietnam’s forex reserves by 2014 had reached a 10-year peak of US$34.6 billion, or four times higher than 2005.
This includes in-kind gold, worth US$380 million, cash in foreign currencies (US$33.8 billion) and SDRs (US$390 million). (SDR is an international reserve asset).
The proportion of SDR in the total forex reserves has been increasing over the last decade. The position of SDR in Vietnam’s forex reserves, according to ADB, is equal to the in-kind gold being held by the government.
As such, if referring to the US Treasury’s report on the US’ creditors, one may see that 30% of the total reserves of US$33.8 billion by 2015 was the US government bonds.
This means 1/3 of the nation’s forex reserves could be valuable papers issued by large economies, and not all of the reserves are in cash.
The report by the US Treasury showed that Vietnam now holds US$12 billion worth of the US government bonds.
However, analysts noted that US$12 billion only includes the US government long-term bonds (more than 10 years) which are deposited at banks in the US.
Besides the long-term bonds, Vietnam still has US government bonds with other terms deposited in non-US countries.
Most international organizations have predicted the high GDP growth rates of 6.3-6.7% for Vietnam this year.
Meanwhile, Le Minh Hung, SBV Governor, when answering the local press some days ago, said the forex reserves had reached the record high of US$38 billion earlier this year.
Hung said in the first five months of the year, SBV bought nearly US$8 billion and said that Vietnam’s forex reserves would continue increasing in the second half of the year.
Countries are advised to keep the forex reserves which are equal to 3-month export turnover. If noting that Vietnam exported US$166 billion in 2015, this means that it needs to maintain the reserves at US$40-42 billion.
