The foreign currency reserves of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) rose to US$160.3 billion at the end of February, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority said Friday.

The latest figure, representing an increase of US$0.4 billion from a month earlier, made Hong Kong the ninth largest holder of foreign reserves among the world's economies, after the Chinese mainland, Japan, Russia, India, Taiwan, South Korea, Brazil and Singapore.

Hong Kong and Taiwan, both Chinese territories, are taken as separate economies.

The current foreign reserves were about 7 times the currency in circulation in Hong Kong, or 38 percent of the HK dollar M3, the broadest measure used by economists to estimate the entire money supply within an economy.

Hong Kong has been maintaining a currency peg to the US dollar for quite a long time at the fixed rate of HK$7.8 to 1 US dollar.

(Xinhua News Agency March 8, 2008)