Segun Akanni, Toronto, Canada 
China’s forex reserves continue to grow
China’s forex reserves, the biggest in the world, rose for the third month in a row in April, signalling eased capital flight pressure, central bank data showed Sunday.
The reserves climbed to $3.0295 trillion at the end of April from $3.0091 trillion a month earlier, according to statistics from the People’s Bank of China.
This was the first time the reserves expanded for three months consecutively since June 2014.
The country’s gold reserves also increased from 73.7 billion U.S. dollars by the end of March to over 75 billion U.S. dollars by the end of April.
The State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) predicted last month that the size of forex reserves would become more stable in the future as the economy maintains relatively fast growth and the country’s current account surplus stays in a reasonable range.
There had been growing concerns about capital flowing out of the Chinese market in the second half of 2016, when the economy was facing looming downward pressures and the Chinese yuan was in the middle of a losing streak against the U.S. dollar.
In January, China’s forex reserves declined below the closely watched 3-trillion-dollar mark for the first time since February 2011.
However, concerns about capital outflows have receded lately, with the Chinese economy on a firmer footing, supported by a string of upbeat data including industrial profits, factory activity and fixed-asset investment.
Forex reserves by Nations:(Wikipedia)
Rank Country Forex reserves (ex. gold)
(in millions of US$) As of
1 China 3,029,967 December 2016
2 Japan 1,188,387 December 2016
3 Switzerland 689,497 March 2017
4 Saudi Arabia 535,977 December 2016
5 Taiwan 434,204 December 2016
— Hong Kong, China 386,164 December 2016
6 Republic of Korea 366,307 December 2016
7 Brazil 362,506 December 2016
— Euro symbol.svg Eurozone 344,556 December 2016
8 India 340,314 December 2016
9 Russia 317,548 December 2016
10 Singapore 246,364 December 2016
11 Mexico 173,536 December 2016
12 Thailand 166,157 December 2016
13 United Kingdom 147,004 December 2016
14 Indonesia 113,485 December 2016
15 Poland 110,555 December 2016
16 United States 105,204 March 2017[1]
17 Israel 98,361 December 2016
18 Malaysia 93,095 December 2016
19 Turkey 92,057 December 2016
20 Czech Republic 85,362 December 2016
21 Canada 82,718 December 2016
22 Philippines 73,433 December 2016
23 Denmark 61,770 December 2016
24 Peru 60,463 December 2016
25 Norway 60,443 December 2016
26 Germany 59,569 December 2016
27 France 56,136 December 2016
28 Sweden 54,739 December 2016
29 Australia 52,079 December 2016
30 Italy 44,803 December 2016
