Improving the Analytical Usefulness of the IMF’s COFER Data

Using a combination of stratified mean imputation and carry-forward imputation, IMF staff construct a new COFER timeseries which allocates 100 percent of global foreign exchange reserves across currencies, eliminating the "unallocated" portion of the dataset.

Volume/Issue: Volume 2025 Issue 014

Publication date: November 2025

ISBN: 9798229004855

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Topics covered in this book

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Banks and Banking , Money and Monetary Policy , Currency composition , Dollar , Currencies , International reserves , Reserve currencies , Exchange rates

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Summary

This technical note presents a methodological change to the International Monetary Fund’s Currency Composition of Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) dataset. Using a combination of stratified mean imputation and carry-forward imputation, IMF staff construct a new COFER timeseries which allocates 100 percent of global foreign exchange reserves across currencies, eliminating the "unallocated" portion of the dataset. This change improves the analytical usefulness of the COFER dataset by providing a more complete and consistent time series, while also strengthening the confidentiality of individual country data. Overall trends in currency composition remain broadly unchanged, but the allocation of previously unallocated reserves leads to modest adjustments in currency shares.