Improving the Analytical Usefulness of the IMF’s COFER Data

Glen Kwende and Erin Nephew

No 2025/014, IMF Technical Notes and Manuals from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Currency composition; Dollar; COFER dataset; IMF Library; analytical usefulness; usefulness of the IMF's COFER Data; IMF staff; views ofthe IMF; Currencies; International reserves; International liquidity; Reserve currencies; Global (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29
Date: 2025-11-26
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