Costa Rica Central Bank & Its Dollar Reserves

Costa Rica News – The Central Bank uses dollars to reinforce reserves.

This year, especially between May 20 and June 12, the bank experienced a reduction in monetary reserves. The resources of the country face external difficulties.

Buying foreign currency makes up for part of the year’s losses. The dollars were bought on the Foreign Currency Market (Monex). Some were later sold to the public sector and others added to the reserves.

The total bought in November and December 2017 was $474 million net (purchases minus sales). This is almost a third of what it acquired throughout the whole year. In this period $338 million were sold to the public sector and $149.6 million were added to the reserves.

José Antonio Cordero, director of the Research Institute in Economic Sciences of the University of Costa Rica, warns that this influx of dollars is circumstantial and cannot be considered normal or truly counted on.