MACAO, July 16 (Xinhua) -- The preliminary estimate of the foreign exchange reserves in China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) reached 166.4 billion patacas (about 20.68 billion U.S. dollars) at the end of June, the SAR's Monetary Authority said on Tuesday.

The reserves increased by 1.3 percent from the revised value of 164.3 billion patacas (20.36 billion U.S. dollars) for the previous month. Macao SAR's foreign exchange reserves at the end of June 2019 represented 10 times the currency in circulation or 82.0 percent of pataca M2 at the end of May 2019.

The trade-weighted effective exchange rate index for the pataca dropped 0.13 points month-to-month but rose 3.50 points year-on-year to 106.7 in June 2019, 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.