Currency basket in the context of "Fixed exchange rate"

In macroeconomics and modern monetary policy, a devaluation is an official lowering of the value of a country's currency within a fixed exchange-rate system, in which a monetary authority formally sets a lower exchange rate of the national currency in relation to a foreign reference currency or currency basket. The opposite of devaluation, a change in the exchange rate making the domestic currency more expensive, is called a revaluation. A monetary authority (e.g., a central bank) maintains a fixed value of its currency by being ready to buy or sell foreign currency with the domestic currency at a stated rate; a devaluation is an indication that the monetary authority will buy and sell foreign currency at a lower rate.

However, under a floating exchange rate system (in which exchange rates are determined by market forces acting on the foreign exchange market, and not by government or central bank policy actions), a decrease in a currency's value relative to other major currency benchmarks is instead called depreciation; likewise, an increase in the currency's value is called appreciation.

The ruble, rouble or rubel (Belarusian: рубель, romanized: rubieĺ; Russian: рубль, romanized: rubl'; abbreviation: Br, ISO code: BYN) is the currency of Belarus. It is subdivided into 100 kopecks (Belarusian: капейка, romanized: kapiejka, Russian: копейка, romanized: kopeyka).

The exchange rate of the Belarusian ruble is determined based on a basket of currencies consisting of the Russian ruble (with a weight of 60%), the US dollar (with a weight of 30%) and the renminbi (with a weight of 10%). The euro was part of said currency basket but was excluded in December 2022 due to a decrease in the volume of trade between Belarus and the European Union.

Special drawing rights (SDRs, code XDR) are supplementary foreign exchange reserve assets defined and maintained by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). SDRs are units of account for the IMF, and not a currency per se. SDRs represent a claim to currency held by IMF member countries for which they may be exchanged. When SDRs were created in 1969, they were each worth 0.888671 grams of gold, roughly the equivalent of one US dollar at the time. In 1973, following the termination of the Bretton Woods agreement in 1971, the IMF redefined the SDR as equivalent to the value of a specific selection of world currencies.

SDRs are allocated by the IMF to countries and central banks, and cannot be held or used by private parties. The number of SDRs in existence was around XDR 21.4 billion in August 2009. During the 2008 financial crisis, an additional XDR 182.6 billion was allocated to "provide liquidity to the global economic system and supplement member countries' official reserves". By October 2014, the number of SDRs in existence was XDR 204 billion. Due to economic stress caused by the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, several finance ministers of poorer countries called for a new allocation to support member economies as they seek ways to recover, and some economists called for the allocation to be as high as $4T. In March 2021 the G24 and others proposed an allocation of $500B for this purpose. In response, XDR 456.5 billion (about US$650B) was allocated on 23 August 2021.

The European Currency Unit (French: Unité de compte européenne, Spanish: Unidad Monetaria Europea, German: Europäische Währungseinheit ; ⟨₠⟩, ECU, or XEU) was a unit of account used by the European Economic Community and composed of a basket of member country currencies. The ECU came in to operation on 13 March 1979 and was assigned the ISO 4217 code. The ECU replaced the European Unit of Account (EUA) at parity in 1979, and it was later replaced by the euro (EUR) at parity on 1 January 1999.

As a unit of account, the ECU was not a circulating currency and did not replace or override the value of the currency of EEC member countries. However, it was used to price some international financial transactions and capital transfers.

There are 180 currencies recognized as legal tender in United Nations (UN) member states, UN General Assembly non-member observer states, partially recognized or unrecognized states, and their dependencies. However, excluding the pegged (fixed exchange rate) currencies, there are only 130 currencies that are independent or pegged to a currency basket.