UAE foreign currency assets surge to $95bln in January

The total foreign currency assets held by the Central Bank of the UAE stood at Dh348 billion ($95 billion) by the end of January, thus registering a jump of 6.7 per cent from Dh326 billion for the same period last year, according to the CBUAE figures.

The growth comes even as the current account balances and deposits with foreign banks strengthened to Dh278.8 billion against Dh254.9 billion in the same month last year.

The foreign assets exclude CBUAE Reserve Tranche Position and Special Drawing Rights holdings with the International Monetary Fund.

Monetary aggregates, which include currency in circulation outside banks plus monetary deposits and quasi-deposits and government deposits, referred to as M3, continued to increase, hitting Dh1.603 trillion by the end of January 2019 against Dh1.481 trillion in the same month last year.

Government deposits amounted to Dh297.6 billion in January, while monetary deposits hit Dh415 billion and quasi-monetary deposits stood at Dh819 billion.

Also the Central Bank of the UAE released the figures for fund transfers among the UAE's banks whose total value surged to Dh906.4 billion in January 2019, up 7.8 per cent from Dh840.6 billion over January 2018.

According to the UAE Central Bank figures, Dh632.7 of the January transactions were transferred to banks and circa Dh273.3 billion to individuals.

The transactions are made through the UAE Fund Transfer System (UAEFTS) that enables the lenders to conduct all interbank local fund transfers.

In the meantime, a total of 2.3 million cheques worth Dh105.4 billion were handled by the UAE Clearing Cheque System during January 2019, according to CBUAE, with withdrawals valued at Dh17.85 billion during the same month, it added.-TradeArabia News Service