CHINA’S central bank has omitted details of financial institutions’ foreign exchange holdings from monthly data that sheds light on the scale of its intervention to support the yuan.

    The change took effect in its report for January, when the currency’s slide to a five-year low roiled global financial markets and prompted the People’s Bank of China to step up efforts to boost the exchange rate amid record capital outflows.

    While the authority announced a US$99.47 billion slide in its foreign exchange reserves for last month, less than December’s record US$107.9 billion drop, the figure may not represent the true extent of dollar sales if State-owned lenders were also used to intervene.

    “Sometimes it’s the commercial banks that sell a lot of dollars when the central bank wants to prop up the yuan,” said Zhou Hao, a senior economist at Commerzbank AG in Singapore. When this happens, the slide in foreign currency assets held by Chinese financial institutions “is typically much larger than the decline in foreign reserves,” he said.

    China used intervention, verbal warnings and a tightening of capital controls in its bid to quell speculative attacks on the yuan in the offshore market last month.

    The measures, which caused overnight borrowing costs for the currency to surge to an unprecedented 66.82 percent in Hong Kong, enjoyed some success. (SD-Agencies)