MACAO, March 14 (Xinhua) -- The preliminary estimate of the foreign exchange reserves in China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) reached 166.8 billion patacas (about 20.63 billion U.S. dollars) at the end of February, the SAR's Monetary Authority said on Thursday.

The reserves increased by 1.6 percent from the revised value of 164.3 billion patacas (20.32 billion dollars) for the previous month. The Macao SAR's foreign exchange reserves at the end of February 2019 represented nine times the currency in circulation, or 81.1 percent of pataca M2 at the end of January 2019.

The trade-weighted effective exchange rate index for the pataca dropped 0.02 points month-to-month but rose 4.86 points year-on-year to 105.6 in February, implying that overall speaking, 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.