China Reserves Rise a Third Month Amid Tighter Capital Controls

• China Reserves Rise a Third Month Amid Tighter Capital Controls

China’s foreign-exchange reserves rose for a third month in April, beating estimates, as tighter capital controls kept money from flowing out of the country and the yuan was stable.

Reserves climbed $20.45 billion to $3.03 trillion, the People’s Bank of China said Sunday, compared with a median estimate of $3.02 trillion in a Bloomberg survey of economists.

Stricter capital controls, easing currency pressure and the first back-to-back acceleration in quarterly economic growth in seven years are shoring up the world’s largest stockpile after policy makers propping up the yuan burned through almost a quarter of the reserves since mid-2014.

Outflows are likely to ease notably this year as yuan depreciation expectations recede and the dollar remains stable, Eva Yi, an economist at China International Capital Corp. in Hong Kong, wrote in an April 24 note. The more ad hoc capital controls could be loosened or removed in the near future, she said.

The onshore yuan declined 0.2 percent against the dollar in April, the third month in a row in which it hasn’t moved by more than 0.22 percent. A gauge of swings in the onshore yuan against the U.S. currency is at the lowest level since August 2015.