10countries with the biggest forex reserves
10 Countries With The Biggest Forex Reserves
Foreign currency reserves are vital to a nation's economic well-being. Without adequate reserves, an economy can grind to a halt. The country may be unable to pay for critical imports like crude oil, or service its external debt .
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) defines reserve assets as external assets that a country’s monetary authority can use to meet balance of payments financing needs, use to affect currency exchange rates in currency exchange markets, and other related purposes. Most nations hold the vast majority of their foreign currency reserves in U. S. dollars and a much smaller portion in euros.
A sizeable war chest of foreign currency reserves is especially handy during a currency crisis. since it can be used to defend against speculative attacks on the national currency. Russia, which holds substantial foreign currency reserves, is a good example. In 2014, the United States and the European Union imposed economic sanctions on Russia for its involvement in the Ukraine conflict. Coupled with a 50 percent plunge in the price of crude oil (Russia's largest export and a key driver of its economy), these sanctions severely impacted the Russian economy.
The ruble slid 40 percent against the dollar in 2014, but the outcome could have been far worse had Russia had not intervened in foreign exchange markets to prop up the ruble, expending more than $80 billion of its reserves in doing so.

Here are the ten countries with the largest foreign currency reserve assets as of December 2014. All reserve assets are given in billions of U. S. dollars. (Source: data. imf. China and Taiwan data sourced from websites of their respective central banks.)