No abstract

The study examines Lesotho's demand for holding international reserves and assesses the country's reserve adequacy position over the period 1981-2012. The results from the standard reserve adequacy benchmarks reveal that Lesotho generally has sufficient stock of foreign reserves to satisfy the minimum adequacy requirements, with the level of reserves in other periods being relatively higher than what is required. Furthermore, the estimates of Lesotho's reserve demand function from the cointegration analysis suggest that the long-term reserve demand policies for Lesotho are positively related to average propensity to import, economic growth and export volatility while negatively associated with exchange rate volatility and opportunity cost of holding reserves. The former finding confirms that the precautionary motive plays a significant role in determining Lesotho's demand for holding international reserves, while the latter indicates that reserve accumulation in Lesotho is based on profitability considerations. The results also show that although the demand for foreign reserves increased in the years of democracy, the country sometimes uses part its international reserves to finance government infrastructure projects.

Literature has addressed the issue of choosing reserves levels in the context of models based on traditional adequacy ratio. Above that, this study employs the model of Jeanne and Rancière (2006), which captured the unique characteristics of a country, and effects of a small and large external shocks portrayed that international reserves in Lesotho are kept at level higher than the optimum level. The results outlined that optimum level of reserves for Lesotho is on average 44 per cent of GDP for a small crisis and 47 per cent of GDP for a larger crisis. Subsequently, this leads to the conclusion that the amount of reserves exceeding the level of backing assets could be managed under a more return-oriented investment strategy in order to minimize the opportunity cost of reserves holding. Since there is evidence of excess funds, the authorities should strengthen the implementation capacity of the annual capital budgets by evolving a forceful and vigorous monitoring and evaluation framework in order to accomplish the National Vision 2020 goals. This will also create an opportunity to allocate resources to the National Strategic Development Plan (NSDP) which provides overall national strategic thrust from 2012 to 2016.

No abstract