NEW YORK (Reuters) – The amount in U.S. dollars held as reserve currency globally slipped in the last quarter of 2024 while the percentage of actual dollars held as reserve ticked up, IMF data showed on Monday.
Dollar-equivalent amounts dropped also among holdings in euro, pound sterling, yuan, yen, Swiss franc and Australian and Canadian dollars, with only the latter showing a tick up in the percentage of holdings, the IMF’s Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) data showed.
Reported global holdings of reserves of foreign exchange fell to $12.36 trillion at the end of 2024 from $12.75 trillion at the end of the third quarter of last year. Broken-down reserves, those which identify the single currencies, fell to $11.47 trillion from $11.84 trillion.
The value of the greenback rose 7.7% in the last quarter of 2024 against a basket of peers, lowering the dollar value of reserves kept in other currencies. The dollar index has fallen nearly 4% in the first quarter of this year.
“I don’t expect drastic changes from one COFER report to the other because, why would you? The U.S. remains the most liquid and deep market in the world,” said Brad Bechtel, global head of FX at Jefferies in New York.
“The only category that has changed significantly is the allocation to gold, especially in places like China, India, Russia… but the COFER data doesn’t really pick that up.”
The percentage of dollar-amount holdings reported in dollars edged up to 57.8% of the disaggregated total from 57.3%, and that in loonies ticked up to 2.77% from 2.74%. Euro holdings dropped to 19.8% from 20.0%, while the share of holdings in sterling fell to 4.73% from 4.98%.
The share of holdings in yuan was unchanged at 2.18% and yen was little changed at 5.82% from 5.83%.
(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; editing by Edward Tobin)
