The Bank of Ghana’s Special Drawing Rights (SDR), holdings with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) stood at ¢242.39 million at the end of November 2020 and ¢76.18 million in 2019.
This represents a 318 percentage points increase on a year-on-year basis.
SDRs are supplementary foreign exchange reserve assets defined and maintained by the IMF.
SDRs are units of account for the IMF, and not a currency per se. They represent a claim to currency held by IMF member countries for which they may be exchanged.
The IMF’s SDR has an exchange rate of 1.38 to the dollar. Aside from the SDR holdings, other foreign assets held by the bank with the exception of foreign currency with banks recorded impressive growth.
Gold assets held by the Bank of Ghana at the end of November 2020 was ¢1.72 billion as against ending of November 2019 which stood at ¢1.39 billion Cedis.
Foreign securities held by the Bank also grew from ¢24.78 billion to ¢31.55 billion for the period under review.
Foreign currencies with banks, however, decreased to ¢7.81 billion at the end of November 2020 from a previous year figure of 10.8 billion. The value of ‘other’ foreign assets remained the same at ¢71 million for the same period under review.
Overall, the total value of the central bank’s foreign assets as at November 2020 and contained in its Statistical Bulletin for same period amounted to 41.4 billion Cedis.
