6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Following the 1990s crises, as the dotted line in Figure 3 indicates, a number of emerging markets went further to run current account surpluses after cutting investment sharply, and started accumulating foreign exchange reserves to preserve exchange competitiveness. Rather than generating excess demand for the world’s goods, they became suppliers (or equivalently, savers), searching for demand elsewhere.
Today we stand at 15 months of import cover. Furthermore, as inflows of foreign exchange plummeted – especially with the tourism sector coming to a halt during of the pandemic – the Bank has intervened and sold a total amount of USD3.3 billion to the market up to now.