MACAO, Feb. 15 (Xinhua) -- The preliminary estimate of the foreign exchange reserves in China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) reached 164.3 billion patacas (about 20.32 billion U.S. dollars) at the end of January, the SAR's Monetary Authority said on Friday.

The reserves increased 0.4 percent from the revised value of 163.6 billion patacas (about 20.28 billion dollars) for the previous month. It also represented 10 times the currency in circulation, or 82.7 percent of pataca M2 at the end of December last year.

The trade-weighted effective exchange rate index for the pataca dropped 1.14 points month-to-month yet rose 3.57 points year-on-year to 105.6 in January 2019, implying that the exchange rate of the pataca declined against the currencies of Macao's major trading partners on a monthly basis but increased on an annual basis.