Chinese Reserves Tumble By $69 Billion, Biggest Drop Since January

While in recent months, the PBOC had tried to mask the real pace of reserve outflows, covering up the accelerated selling of US-denominated assets to defend its rapidly devaluing currency, we noted in October that using more accurate calculations, China’s capital outflows are once again surging, having hit $78 billion in September. Overnight, China, unable to continue “covering up” its reserve state, disclosed that, as we warned, FX reserve liquidation had soared with total reserves falling by nearly $70 billion last month as the country’s central bank burned through more of its reserves in the fight to defend the renminbi from greater depreciation on the back of accelerating capital outflows. This was the largest decline since January.
PBOC’s total reserves declined by $69.1 bilion to $3.051 trillion in November, a decline of 2.2 per cent from the previous month and the largest drop since January’s fall of 3 per cent. A median forecast from economists had predicted a fall of only 1.9 per cent from October.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Dec 7, 2016.