KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 22): Malaysia's international reserves rebounded and added about US$400 million (RM1.79 billion) by the middle of November.

The latest international reserves totalled US$118 billion as at Nov 15, 2024, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) said in a statement on Friday. BNM releases data on foreign exchange reserves every two weeks.

The reserves position is sufficient to finance 4.6 months of imports of goods and services, and is 0.9 times the total short-term external debt, BNM said.

The short-term external debt comprises borrowings from non-residents with maturity of one year or less, mostly by resident banks for their foreign currency liquidity operations as well as multinational corporations, including foreign banks, borrowing from their overseas parents or headquarters.

“These obligations can be met in the normal course of operations from their external asset holdings, and do not pose any claims on BNM's international reserves,” the central bank noted.

Among the main components, foreign currency reserves rose to US$105 billion from US$104.6 billion at the end of October while the reserves position at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was unchanged at US$1.3 billion.

Special drawing rights — reserve assets maintained by the IMF based on a basket of currencies — were also stable at US$5.9 billion, and there was no change in value of its gold holdings at US$3.3 billion.

Other reserve assets were flat at US$2.5 billion.