RMB bonds good for mainland, Hong Kong

By Yang Tao (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-06-18 08:59

Second, floating renminbi bonds will help reduce the risks evolving from rising stock prices and also provide Hong Kong residents with a new monetary product.

Finally, Hong Kong's institutional and technical infrastructures relevant to floating renminbi bonds will be improved. The financial cooperation between the mainland and Hong Kong will grow.

All this combines to provide more powerful support for overall economic cooperation between the two.

Issuing renminbi bonds in Hong Kong is equally important to the mainland because the undertaking helps quicken the pace of the renminbi's internationalization and convertibility.

In Hong Kong, a free capital market, the price of renminbi bonds will fully mirror international investors' expectations of the renminbi's revaluation. This is of reference value for the foreign-exchange reform of the Chinese currency.

In addition, the floating of renminbi bonds will give China more say in pricing renminbi derivatives.

Monetary products such as renminbi bonds are expected to strengthen Hong Kong's status as the center of renminbi offshore derivatives.

Also, floating renminbi bonds in Hong Kong indicates that the opening of the Chinese mainland's capital market has taken another step forward. With this as a starting point, a richer variety of bonds and securities is expected to be issued in the future by many more institutions.

Floating renminbi bonds in Hong Kong will in turn spur the development of the bond market on the mainland.

At present, the mainland bond market still falls short of the needs of the country's rapid economic development, though this market has made impressive advances in recent years. In addition, this bond market needs to be standardized. Floating renminbi bonds in Hong Kong helps in this respect, stimulating the buildup of the mainland bond market's infrastructure and creating progress in transaction rules.


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