(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-02-28 10:12

MACAO  -- The Monetary Authority of Macao (AMCM) announced Wednesday that the preliminary estimate of the city's foreign exchange reserves amounted to 108.9 billion patacas (13.6 billion US dollars) in January 2008, up 43.1 percent year-on-year.

The reserves increased by 2.5 percent from the revised figure of 106.3 billion patacas (13.2 billion US dollars for the previous month, and the reserves at end-January 2008 represented 28 times the currency in circulation or about 213 percent of Pataca M2 at end-December 2007, according to AMCM.

In addition, AMCM said that the trade-weighted effective exchange rate index for the pataca, a gauge of the domestic currency's exchange rates against the currencies of Macao's major trading partners, fell by 0.47 points month-to-month or 4.19 points year-on-year, from 89.58 in December 2007 to 89.11 in January 2008.