Forex reserves rise to $81-B in January: BSP

ABS-CBN News Posted at Feb 07 2017 07:53 PM http://news.abs-cbn.com/business/02/07/17/forex-reserves-rise-to-81-b-in-january-bsp MANILA – The country’s foreign exchange reserves rose to $81.044 billion in January from $80.691 billion in December, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said Tuesday. The increase in foreign exchange reserves was mainly due to inflows arising from net foreign currency deposits by the national government, revaluation adjustments in its gold holdings and income from investments abroad, the central bank said in a statement. The central bank expects reserves this year to rise to $84.7 billion from $81.045 billion at end-2016. The central bank expects the country to have a current account surplus in both 2016 and 2017, despite the risk of capital outflows on prospects of higher interest rates in the United States. It cut its 2016 projection for current account surplus to $2.5 billion, from $5.8 billion seen earlier. The surplus is expected to narrow to $0.8 billion in this year. — With Reuters