Higher foreign exchange reserves link to more imports per person.
Comparing Reserves excluding gold, foreign exchange (SDR), per capita with Imports of goods and services (constant 2015 US$), per capita across 143 countries, 2022–2025.
- Rank correlation
- +0.67
- Holding size constant
- +0.52
- Countries compared
- 143
- Period
- 2022–2025
What might link these
Countries with larger foreign exchange reserves per capita tend to import more goods and services per capita. This suggests that countries with greater financial capacity are better able to finance imports, which can stimulate economic activity.
Why this is not proof of anything
This is a correlation across countries, not an experiment. It cannot show that either indicator causes the other, and both may simply follow a third thing. While a positive association is found, this correlation does not imply that higher reserves directly cause higher imports, as other economic factors could be at play.
The second figure above repeats the measurement with national population and income held constant. It is the more conservative number: a relationship that largely disappears there was mostly telling you that larger, richer countries have more of most things.
How this was measured
Both indicators were ranked across every country reporting each, and the two rankings compared — ranks rather than raw values, because a handful of very large countries can otherwise manufacture a relationship on their own. The calculation is arithmetic over figures already published on this site; the commentary above is drafted from the two indicator names and the resulting coefficients.