It says the date of disclosure has been brought forward to provide more timely information to the market, and align with MAS’ monetary policy cycle.
The data on MAS’ net purchase of FX from its intervention operations from 1 July 2019 to 31 December 2019 will be published on MAS’ website on 9 April 2020, 5 pm, under the Statistics section.
Henceforth, MAS will release the data on a six-monthly basis, on the first business day of every April and October. The data will comprise MAS’s net purchases of FX from its intervention operations on a six-month aggregated basis, and with a three-month lag from the end of the period, MAS says.
In May of 2019, MAS announced that it would be transferring S$45 billion from the official foreign reserves (OFR) to the Government for longer-term investment.
This amount is the excess over what MAS deems necessary to maintain confidence in Singapore’s exchange rate-centred monetary policy. MAS, as the central bank of Singapore, manages the country’s OFR, which stood at S$404 billion as at April 2019.
MAS says Singapore’s monetary policy is aimed at ensuring medium-term price stability.
Given the dominant role that the exchange rate plays in determining core inflation in Singapore, MAS conducts monetary policy by managing the exchange rate of the Singapore Dollar.
MAS does this through market intervention operations to keep the nominal effective exchange rate of the Singapore Dollar within a policy band consistent with ensuring price stability.
