期刊名称：Euro Area Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Statistics
印刷版ISSN：1830-3420
电子版ISSN：1830-3439
出版年度：2006
出版社：European Central Bank
摘要：World foreign exchange reserves grew from USD 1.2 trillion in January 1995 to more than USD 4.0 trillion in September 20052. Reserve accumulation in this period exhibited four features that seem largely unprecedented. Three of these features became particularly prominent in 2002-04. First, world reserves grew by around 85% (or 91% if the first eight months of 2005 are included), at a pace three times faster than in 1999-2001. Second, monetary authorities in Asia, including Japan until March 2004, accounted for the bulk of the accumulation, and eight of them are currently among the ten largest reserve holders. Third, fewer official creditors held an increasingly larger share of the total accumulation. The top five reserve accumulating central banks, which accounted for almost 57% of the total reserve accumulation on average in the period 1995- 2001, increased their share to more than 68% of the total world accumulation in 2004. The top two, Japan and China, accounted for about half of the total world accumulation in 2002-04, and currently hold around 40% of the total world stock of reserves. A fourth, equally important development has come about more recently: the oil-exporting countries, whose combined current account surplus is estimated to have exceeded that of the Asian economies in 2005, have emerged as a new major group of net capital exporters in the world economy. They, however, have accumulated assets not only in the form of “traditional” reserves, but also by building up foreign assets in so-called oil funds – a phenomenon that is not yet fully captured by the available statistics, including those on the financing of the US external deficit.
