Chinese Banks' Forex Surplus Tops $92 bln in Q1

The surplus of Chinese banks' foreign exchange purchases to sales in transactions with clients in the first quarter stood at 92.7 billion U.S. dollars, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) announced Tuesday.

The figure did not include the amount from bank's own forex transactions and interbank transactions, said a statement on the SAFE's website.

The SAFE provided no comparison on a year-on-year or quarterly basis as the regulator only began to release monthly data on bank foreign exchange transactions on a quarterly basis this year, the statement said.

In the first three months, Chinese banks purchased 270.3 billion U.S. dollars from institutional and individual clients: 100 billion U.S. dollars in March, 76.3 billion U.S. dollars in February, and 94 billion U.S. dollars in January.

Forex sales to clients were 177.6 billion U.S. dollars in the first quarter: 69.3 billion U.S. dollars in March, 54.5 billion U.S. dollars in February and 53.8 billion U.S. dollars in January.

In 2009, the annual surplus fell 42 percent to 263.5 billion U.S. dollars, according to data released in March.

The surplus of forex purchases to sales was one of the main reasons for the change of China's foreign exchange reserves, the SAFE said in March.

By the end of March, China's foreign exchange reserves rose 16 percent yea on year to 1.954 trillion U.S. dollars.