MACAO, May 16 (Xinhua) -- The preliminary estimate of the foreign exchange reserves in China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) reached 164.7 billion patacas (about 20.39 billion U.S. dollars) at the end of April, the SAR's Monetary Authority said on Thursday.

The reserves increased by 0.9 percent from the revised value of 163.3 billion patacas (20.19 billion U.S. dollars) for the previous month. The Macao SAR's foreign exchange reserves at the end of April represented 10 times the currency in circulation, or 80.5 percent of pataca M2 at the end of March.

The trade-weighted effective exchange rate index for the pataca rose 0.34 points month-to-month and 5.28 points year-on-year to 105.9 in April, implying that overall speaking, the exchange rate of pataca grew against the currencies of Macao's major trading partners.