MACAO, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The foreign exchange reserves in China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) amounted to 153.2 billion patacas (about 18.95 billion U.S. dollars) at the end of April 2018, the Monetary Authority of Macao announced the preliminary estimate on Tuesday.

The reserves decreased by 2.4 percent from the revised value of 156.9 billion patacas (about 19.41 billion dollars) for the previous month. The Macao SAR's foreign exchange reserves at end-April 2018 represented 10 times the currency in circulation, or 81.5 percent of pataca M2 at end-March 2018.

The trade-weighted effective exchange rate index for the pataca rose 0.13 points month-to-month but fell 7.93 points year-on-year to 100.6 in April 2018, implying that overall speaking, the exchange rate of pataca grew against the currencies of Macao's major trading partners on a monthly basis but dropped on an annual basis.