MACAO, March 13 (Xinhua) - The Monetary Authority of Macao announced on Friday that the preliminary estimate of Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR)'s foreign exchange reserves amounted to 243.5 billion patacas (about 30.2 billion U.S. dollars) at the end of February 2026, up 0.7 percent from the previous month.

A staff member counts banknotes at a bank in Qionghai of south China's Hainan province in this undated photo. (File photo: Xinhua)

The reserves increased from a revised 241.8 billion patacas in January. The monetary authority said that Macao SAR's foreign exchange reserves at end-February represented 11 times the currency in circulation or 88.3 percent of the Macao pataca M2 at end-January.

Meanwhile, the trade-weighted effective exchange rate index for the Macao pataca dropped 1.02 points month on month and 7.29 points year on year to 99.4 in February, implying that overall, the exchange rate of the Macao pataca declined against the currencies of Macao's major trading partners, the authority noted.