The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP’s) reported gross international reserves (GIR) totalling $110.9 at the end of December, 2025 is admittedly lower month-on-month and would have been much lower if not for the ramping up of the price of gold in the global market.
The GIR reached $110.12 billion in 2020, and declined to $108.79 billion in 2021 and $96.15 billion in 2022, before increasing to $103.75 in 2023 and to $106.26 billion in 2024.
On a monthly basis, dollar reserves slipped by 0.3 percent from the $111.25 billion in November 2025.
RCBC chief economist Michael Ricafort said the month-on-month decline was due to the 1.1-percent drop in foreign investments to $87 billion in December last year.
He noted however that this was “positively offset by the continued month-on-month increase in gold holdings by $552 million or 3.1 percent to a new record high of $18.577 billion.”
The economist noted that world gold prices gained 1.9 percent month-on-month in December 2025 and “posted a new record high of $4,549.92 per ounce on Dec. 26, 2025,” helping lift the value of the BSP’s gold holdings.
So, there… the Philippines did not increase its physical gold in the central bank vaults. The price of gold just rose because of geopolitical developments and as the winds of war started to blow in many flashpoints in the globe. Investors, both countries and financial institutions, are ditching the US dollar in favor of more stable assets like gold, silver, and Bitcoin.
It was reported that the foreign exchange buffer was higher by 4.3 percent than the $106.26 billion in December 2024. The figure also exceeded the central bank’s own projection of $105 billion.
BSP Governor Eli Remolona Jr. said the rise in the value of the central bank’s gold holdings reflected higher global gold prices rather than any gold trading by the BSP during the month.
Remolona also stressed that the BSP does not speculate on the metal’s price, although it sold a huge volume of gold in the international market when prices were down and just on their way to a parabolic trend. This can justifiably be called as failed speculation.
“We don’t speculate on the price of gold. What we do is we hold gold as a modest proportion of our reserves and we hold gold as a hedge against what we call event risk,” he said.
He assured that the BSP simply maintains a proportion of gold in its reserves as protection against adverse geopolitical developments and financial risks.