Foreign exchange holdings amount to $95.42 bil. in Jan.

The Bank of Korea (BOK) said yesterday that the nation's foreign exchange holdings stood at $95.42 billion at the end of January, a decrease of $780 million from the end of last year.

The decline was largely attributed to the repayment of $1 billion in loans offered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at the end of 1997, when the nation was facing a foreign exchange crisis.

A reduction in the dollar value of yen-denominated assets held by the government, the result of a weak yen was another reason for the lower foreign exchange holdings. Korea¡¯s foreign exchange stockpile steadily expanded from $92.7 billion at the end of October last year to $93.34 billion at the end of November and $96.2 billion at the end of December.

Hong Chan-Sun hcs@donga.com