The Federal Reserve on Wednesday announced the extension of its temporary U.S. dollar liquidity swap lines with nine central banks through December 31, 2021. These arrangements were first announced on March 19, 2020 to ease strains in global dollar funding markets resulting from the COVID-19 shock and to mitigate the effect of such strains on the supply of credit to households and businesses, both domestically and abroad. Extensions to the facility through March 2021 and later through September 2021 were announced on July 29, 2020 and December 16, 2020, respectively. A further extension of the temporary swap lines will help sustain improvements in global U.S. dollar funding markets by serving as an important liquidity backstop.
These swap lines allow the provision of U.S. dollar liquidity in amounts up to $60 billion each for the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Banco Central do Brasil, the Bank of Korea, the Banco de México, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and the Sveriges Riksbank (Sweden) and $30 billion each for the Danmarks Nationalbank (Denmark), the Norges Bank (Norway), and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
