The International Monetary Fund declared Wednesday that in the first quarter the world's forex reserves totaled more than 4 trillion USD for the first time.

This is also the first time that the IMF, which used to release annual report, has published quarterly forex reserve report. IMF asserted it would offer more report to improve the transparency and help secure the stable operation of the financial system for countries and the world as a whole.

Statistics show that the forex reserves of 4.041 trillion USD for the third quarter were higher than the previous quarter by 95 billion USD, or 2.4 percent. The increase was 599 billion USD or 17 percent over the same period of last year. Given the 1.881 trillion USD forex reserves in 2000, the number has more than doubled.

The figure helps assess the currencies in the forex reserve basket. Of the total about 2.696 trillion USD is invoicing currency, of which 1.791 trillion, or 66.4 percent is USD denomination. That is slightly higher than the 66.2 percent share in the second quarter but lower than the 67.6 percent share in the same period of last year.

Reserves in terms of euro accounts for 24.3 percent, one percentage point higher than the second quarter. It was 23.7 percent in the same period of last year.

The Japanese yen and sterling are another two important currencies. Forex reserves denominated in yen and sterling accounted for 3.7 percent and 3.6 percent respectively, both higher their shares in the same period of last year when they made up 3.6 percent and 2.9 percent respectively.

Figures that IMF can access prove that developing countries hold some 2.762 trillion USD of forex reserves.

By People's Daily Online