Japan's foreign-exchange reserves fell in April for the first time in eight months because the government refrained from intervening in the currency market to weaken the yen, the Finance Ministry said Wednesday.
The reserves fell $11.61 billion from the previous month to $814.97 billion, it said.
Separate data the ministry released the same day show that monetary authorities had halted the intervention on March 17, after spending record amounts in the foreign-exchange market to stem rapid gains in the yen from the start of the year.
The data show that Japan's currency operations in the period between January and March reached a record 14.83 trillion yen, compared with the previous record of 7.55 trillion yen in the July-September period of 2003. As Japan refrained from conducting currency operations in April, the reserves fell by the largest amount since April 2000, when comparable data are available. But the reserves total remained the second-largest on record, after the $826.58 billion in March.