Northeast Asia

China’s foreign exchange and interbank money market announced on Wednesday that foreign financial instituions conducting FX forward-trading will have to start setting aside reserves later in the year.

China is working hard to delivering on the promise of creating a multicurrency, global monetary system despite the difficulties in challenging the dollar’s status, according to an annual report by the think tank Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) published on June 30.

The People’s Bank of China said on Tuesday it is contemplating the ‘orderly participation’ of commercial banks to trade in the offshore renminbi market. On paper, the proposed move seems to be a further opening up of its FX market. However, market participants say Beijing’s true aim is to exert greater influence on the CNH and maintain the stability of the renminbi.

The Mutual Recognition of Funds (MRF) scheme has had a relatively slow start, but Chinese regulators are said to be looking at Luxembourg to expand the scope of the progamme, GlobalRMB has learned. But difficulties abound in bringing the project to reality.

Much of the debate around MSCI’s decision to not add A-shares has focused on China’s need to reduce its capital controls. But with Beijing unlikely to let go of the reins anytime soon and MSCI strident in its need for reform, the two sides have reached an impossible impasse unless a compromise can be made.

China’s efforts to meet MSCI’s demands for index inclusion proved to no avail with the firm rejecting A-shares for a third time. No doubt Beijing is miffed, but MSCI has good reasons to hold off for now.

Morgan Stanley is set to name Jing Qian, its co-head of China investment banking, as chief executive of Morgan Stanley Huaxin Securities Co, the US bank’s joint venture in China.

The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) is likely to issue its planned onshore bond denominated in special drawing rights (SDR) as a multi-currency structured note, according to industry participants.

There’s now only five months until the renminbi enters the IMF’s special drawing rights basket in October. But while this shows the progress the RMB has made, panelists at a recent conference are not expecting full convertibility anytime soon.

China's transition from an investment to a consumption economy is moving forward, but GDP growth concerns are likely to delay the country’s reform agenda.

China’s currency was approved to become the fifth member of the IMF’s special drawing rights (SDR) basket of currencies last November. While the new basket only becomes effecting in October 2016, China’s central bank has been campaigning worldwide for a greater role for the IMF’s unit of accounting, with the RMB set to benefit from the strategy.

Negative interest rate policies are pushing central banks to invest in emerging markets assets and currencies, according to a new survey sponsored by HSBC. The RMB, in particular, has seen a rapid growth in popularity over the past few years.