For surplus countries that want to accumulate reserves, it would reduce exchange rate risk.

Latin America will finish 2007 with a current account surplus and growing foreign currency reserves, insulating them from financial crisis.

A reduced Chinese appetite for reserves would be reflected in an appreciation of its currency and a reduction in its trade surplus.

China s purchases of American debt effectively transferred the official reserves gained via China s trade surplus back to the US market.

But if exports continue to grow in the absence of consumption led import growth, distortions occur and the trade surplus and foreign reserves increase.

The consolidated primary surplus is 5 per cent of GDP and reserves have increased from nearly ten billion dollars to over twenty five billion.

Second, China s fiscal surplus, growing foreign exchange reserves, and high savings rate have ensured the financial resources needed to maintain adequate investment and sufficiently rapid growth.

One strategy, termed benign neglect, was to let the surplus countries pile up reserves until they realized that they had a very big problem.

This would not only reduce China s surplus and its need to keep accumulating dollar reserves but also give Asian companies an incentive to reorient production towards domestic markets.

Japan, with a surplus of saving, a strong currency, massive foreign exchange reserves, and factories without domestic orders, should take the lead in providing this funding for infrastructure.

After emerging from the crisis, indicators show a sustained growth in the economy, and a surplus in the fiscal external accounts, together with a recovery in national reserves.

With rebalancing will come a decline in China s surplus saving, much slower accumulation of foreign exchange reserves, and a concomitant reduction in its seemingly voracious demand for dollar denominated assets.

As a surplus saver, China has run large current account surpluses since 1994, accumulating a massive portfolio of foreign exchange reserves that now stands at almost 3.7 trillion.

In the third quarter of this year, China s foreign exchange reserves increased by 194 billion, which far exceeded the country s 66 billion trade surplus and 23 billion in inflows of foreign direct investment.

Moreover, China sits on roughly 3.3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves much of it in dollars, but also in other major currencies owing to its large trade surplus in recent decades.

Partly by design and partly by chance, about a decade ago China found itself consistently accumulating large amounts of foreign reserves by running a trade surplus and intervening to buy up the dollars that this generated.

The country was running a current account surplus, but the pound was slipping against the dollar, causing the Bank of England to sell its dollar reserves to defend the fixed exchange rate.

The country has the world's largest natural gas reserves, the 8th largest oil reserves, and the second largest coal reserves.

With China running a seemingly perpetual external surplus, foreign currency reserves have continued to mount even during the global economic crisis, with net growth reaching 140 billion in the third quarter of this year.

(h) Surplus

Reserves

As long as US assets were attractive to residents of surplus countries (or there was an acceptable chain of investments from surplus countries that ended in the US), these accumulations of reserves were sustainable. The IMF worried a great deal about what would happen when this chain broke and the eventual break was, of course, more a matter of arithmetic than economics.

Africa s natural gas reserves amount to about 8 of global reserves.

Developing countries built up a current account surplus of 2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2004 and increased their accumulation of reserves (in particular, sub Saharan Africa, by 49.7 per cent, and East Asia and the Pacific, by 42 per cent).

China s Shrinking Trade Surplus

In accordance with a contingency plan to guarantee food security, the World Food Programme (WFP), in cooperation with the Government, has begun to put in place strategic food reserves supplied by local purchase of rice from surplus production areas.

(l) Other reserves

(j) Operating reserves

The End of China s Surplus

Covering this drop in reserves more than half of gas reserves and a fifth of oil reserves have been consumed with imports implies an annual cost of more than 300 billion.

From 2005 to 2008, China s bilateral surplus with the United States increased by 41 , and its trade surplus with Europe more than doubled.

According to some estimates, Kazakhstan has the second largest uranium, chromium, lead, and zinc reserves, the third largest manganese reserves, the fifth largest copper reserves, and ranks in the top ten for coal, iron, and gold.

Africa is estimated to hold more than 10 of global oil reserves and one third of reserves of cobalt and base metals.

CAMBRIDGE China s current account surplus the combination of its trade surplus and its net income from foreign investments is the largest in the world.

Saudi Arabia also has a bilateral and multilateral surplus Americans want its oil, and Saudis want fewer US products. Even in absolute value, Saudi Arabia s multilateral merchandise surplus of 212 billion in 2008 dwarfs China s 175 billion surplus as a percentage of GDP, Saudi Arabia s current account surplus, at 11.5 of GDP, is more than twice that of China.

(g) Transfers to reserves

The last surplus was in 1974.

(p) Surplus due to Member States

a Including earmarked reserves, the total reserves are 70 million for 2002, 93 million for 2003 and 68 million for 2004.

It is estimated that the Norwegian section alone contains 54 of the sea's oil reserves and 45 of its gas reserves.

a Including earmarked reserves, the total reserves are 70 million for 2002, 93 million for 2003 and 68 million for 2004.

They observed that each province in British India, including Burma, had a surplus of foodgrains, and the annual surplus was 5.16 million tons (Bhatia, 1970).

Table 6 Comparison of reserves and staff liabilities

STATEMENT OF ASSETS, LIABILITIES, RESERVES AND FUND BALANCES

There is an enormous surplus of commanders.