COFER (Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves) is a quarterly statistical dataset maintained by the International Monetary Fund that reports the currency composition of central banks' foreign exchange reserve holdings. It is the most widely cited public source for tracking the global role of the US dollar, euro, yen, sterling, renminbi, Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, Swiss franc, and an "other currencies" residual.
Reporting to COFER is voluntary and confidential at the country level: the IMF publishes only aggregates, distinguishing between allocated reserves (where the reporting country has disclosed the currency split) and unallocated reserves (total reserves whose composition the country has not broken down). Over time, the share of allocated reserves has risen substantially — from roughly half of global reserves in the early 2000s to the large majority today — improving the dataset's representativeness. China's gradual reporting to COFER, confirmed by the IMF in 2018, was a major step in this trend.
COFER data are released with a one-quarter lag and are commonly used by researchers, central bankers, and finance ministries to assess questions such as:
- The secular decline in the dollar's share of allocated reserves, which has drifted from above 70% around 2000 to roughly the high-50s percent range in recent years.
- The rise of the renminbi, which the IMF began reporting separately in Q4 2016 after the RMB's inclusion in the SDR basket on 1 October 2016.
- Diversification into "non-traditional reserve currencies" such as the Australian and Canadian dollars, a theme highlighted in IMF working papers by Arslanalp, Eichengreen, and Simpson-Bell.
Limitations include the absence of country-level detail, the exclusion of sovereign wealth fund assets, valuation effects that can distort quarter-on-quarter shares independently of active reallocation, and the lack of breakdowns by instrument or maturity. For MUN and policy work, COFER is a primary source for claims about reserve currency status and de-dollarization debates.
Example
In its Q4 2023 COFER release, the IMF reported the US dollar share of allocated reserves at approximately 58%, with the renminbi share slipping below 2.5%, prompting renewed analyst debate over the pace of reserve diversification.
Frequently asked questions
No. The IMF publishes only global and grouped aggregates. Individual countries' currency compositions are submitted confidentially and are not disclosed.
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