Israel Adds Yuan To Its Reserves And Cuts Dollar Holdings
Israel’s central bank has made the biggest changes to its allocation of reserves in over a decade, adding the Chinese yuan alongside three other currencies to a stockpile that last year exceeded $200 billion for the first time ever. Starting this year, the currency mix will expand from the trio of the U.S. dollar, the euro and the British pound to include the Canadian and Australian dollars as well as the yen and the yuan, which is also known as the renminbi. The additions mark a change in the Bank of Israel’s “whole investment guidelines and philosophy,” Deputy Governor Andrew Abir said in an interview. Following discussions held by the monetary committee last year, the pound and the yen will account for 5% and the currencies of Canada and Australia will have 3.5% each. Under the new approach, the yuan’s proportion is set at 2% for 2022, according to the Israeli central bank’s annual report published at the end of last month. To accommodate the changes, the euro’s share will fall to 20% — the lowest in at least a decade — from just over 30%, while the dollar will account for 61%, down from 66.5%. The pound’s weighting, by contrast, will almost double to 5%, returning to a level last seen in 2011. The “dramatic” rise in Israel’s foreign-exchange reserves led the central bank to lengthen its investment horizon, Abir said. A program of currency interventions begun more than a decade ago by then-Governor Stanley Fischer and dual citizen who's son David used to be Facebook's Chief Revenue officer and left in 2021 to "spend more time with frens and family"…sure nikka to stem the surging shekel helped the central bank amass reserves that now surpass a third of gross domestic product. They stood at just over $206 billion at the end of March. The International Monetary Fund’s survey on the currency composition of official foreign-exchange reserves shows that at the end of last year the euro accounted for close to 20%, the dollar for slightly less than 59% and the pound for almost 5%. The yuan rose slightly from the third quarter to a new high of 2.79%.
https://countercurrents.org/2022/04/israel-adds-yuan-to-its-reserves-and-cuts-dollar-holdings/