SEOUL, Dec 3 (Reuters) - South Korea's foreign reserves dropped by $11.7 billion in November to their lowest level in almost four years, a reflection of liquidity injections into the banking system to combat the global credit crisis.
Statements from the central bank and the finance ministry suggested reserves would continue to fall as they spend dollars to keep the financial system stable.
During the month, the won
The drop in reserves to $200.5 billion in November marked the eighth consecutive monthly fall but was much smaller than October's record decline of $27.4 billion.
The reserves have now fallen more than $50 billion since June. Authorities have sold dollars to support a rapidly falling won and injected billions of dollars to stabilise its financial system in the face of the global credit crisis.
The figures from the Bank of Korea show that November reserves were the lowest since the end of January 2005, when they stood at $199.7 billion.
"The foreign exchange authorities steadily injected foreign currency liquidity to ease uncertainty in the local foreign currency money market due to a persistent global credit crunch," the central bank said.
The Bank of Korea and the government have injected $31.9 billion in foreign currency liquidity into the banking system in October and November, out of a planned $55 billion, the central bank said.
The liquidity injection figure includes $7.5 billion provided by swap deals, it added.
The foreign exchange reserves are likely to fall further as the authorities plan to keep supplying dollars to local banks, the central bank said.
On Tuesday, the Bank of Korea injected $4 billion, making use of a $30 billion currency swap facility with the Federal Reserve for the first time.
The finance minister also said foreign exchange authorities
planned to carry out "smoothing operations" to keep the won
The local currency has fallen 36 percent against the dollar so far this year and hit its lowest level in almost 11 years on Nov. 21.
As of the end of October, South Korea had the world's sixth-largest foreign exchange reserves after China, Japan, Russia, India and Taiwan, the central bank said.
The Bank of Korea said 90.8 percent of the reserves were invested in securities, followed by 8.8 percent deposited at financial institutions. South Korea's foreign reserves ($ billion, at end-month): Nov Oct Sept Aug July June 200.51 212.25 239.67 243.20 247.52 258.10 (Reporting by Cheon Jong-woo; Editing by Neil Fullick)