Jan 18 (Reuters) - Serbia's 2009 euro-denominated hard currency reserves rose by 2.4 billion euros to 10.6 billion euros, mainly fuelled by the country's external borrowing from various multilateral lenders, the central bank said on Monday.
In December alone, the official reserves rose by 563 million euros, as the government drew a 350 million euro loan tranche from the International Monetary Fund, a further 50 million euros in macro-economic assistance from the European Union, as well as 49.5 million euros in loans from the European Investment Bank.
Part of the December growth stemmed from banks setting aside another 116 million euros in mandatory reserves, it said.
In the course of 2009, the central bank spent 272 million euros to service foreign debts and another 221 million euros to repay debts to domestic creditors, it said. The dinar
CURRENCY RESERVES (USD) DEC NOV END-2008 Central bank fx assets 15,225 15,102 11,494 Commercial banks 2,109 1,954 1,372 NOTE - Figures in millions of U.S. dollars.
CURRENCY RESERVES (EUR) DEC NOV END-2008 Central bank fx assets 10,594 10,031 8,160 Commercial banks 1,468 1,298 1,064 (Reporting by Gordana Filipovic; Editing by Ron Askew)