AUD Held by up to 34 Central Banks Globally

The Reserve Bank of Australia said the country’s currency is held by as many as 34 central banks from Reykjavik to Santiago, and models suggested the Aussie dollar was as much as 15 percent overvalued, documents showed.

The central banks of Slovakia and Slovenia were recent additions to a list of 16 economies that publicly hold the Australian currency, according to papers prepared in the second half of 2012 and released today under a Freedom of Information Act request by Bloomberg News. Newcomers on a list of 18 possible holders included China, France, India, South Korea, Thailand and South Africa.

“Most models — including the staff’s internal models and the IMF’s models suggest the exchange rate is overvalued by 4-15 percent,” a document for the RBA’s September board meeting showed. The so-called Aussie was at $1.0269 as of 12:20 p.m. in Sydney, having traded between $1.0167 and $1.0625 in September. While the models suggested the currency was overvalued, it wasn’t “substantially so.”

Bloomberg

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