At worst, in September 1998, we had a negative foreign exchange reserves position of $ billion - the legacy of accumulated losses on foreign exchange operations in earlier years. The progressive closing-out of this negative net open foreign currency position has been a major challenge in the recent years. The negative position was finally closed out only last year, in May 2003.
We then set to the task of squaring-off the negative forward book which had been financing part of our gross reserves. This in turn was achieved in February this year. Since then our reserves have continued to rise, to a level currently of gross reserves of $ billion and net reserves (net of the Reserve Bank’s use of committed medium-term facilities) of $ billion.