Sri Lanka Gross Foreign Reserves at US$4.5bn

21st October 2009, www.lankabusinessonline.com

Sri Lanka's gross official foreign reserves topped 4.5 billion US dollars by October 13, and end-August reserves were at 3,890.1 million US dollars, the Central Bank said.

During the year 212.7 million US dollars had flowed into government Treasury bills and 797.5 million US dollars into Treasury bonds.

Official reserves with the balances of the Asian Clearing Union (ACU), a clearing arrangement involving regional currencies, were 4,045.2 million US dollars.

The Central Bank said based on past 12-month's average imports of 888 million US dollars a month, the gross official reserves were equal to 4.4 months of imports and with ACU funds reserves were equal to 4.6 months of imports.

The Central Bank said it had bought 2,529.3 million US dollars from the forex markets this year.