Bank Deposits Abroad, national and foreign currency, gold, securities, including promissory notes, cheques and letters of credit, as well as other valuables belonging to a bank, which are deposited with it or other banks. The sum total of such valuables belonging to issue or commercial (merchant) banks, as well as the national currency resources deposited in banks abroad add up to a bank’s or a state’s currency deposits abroad. These are used to make payments, pay off obligations and carry out payment turnover between countries. In the capitalist countries, bank deposits abroad are usually made in dollars or sterling; recently, there has been an increase in the number of deposits made in West German marks and Japanese yen. Some of the deposits of the capitalist countries are made up of SDRs (special drawing rights)—the conventional units of the International Monetary Fund. Having considerable deposits abroad, Soviet banks (the USSR State Bank, the USSR Vneshtorg Bank) carry out monetary payment operations with foreign countries, many of which have deposit accounts in Soviet banks for the same purpose.