RQFII expansion to get go-ahead

BEIJING - China's securities regulator said Sunday that it has finished revising and will soon release rules that will further expand the Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (RQFII) pilot scheme.

China will loosen restrictions to allow more institutions to enter the scheme, according to the China Securities Regulatory Commission. Currently, the RQFII scheme is only open to fund and securities firms.

Meanwhile, the CSRC will lift the limitation on investors' portfolio composition to have more capital flowed to the stock markets.

Under the existing rules, investors are ordered to earmark no less than 80 percent of yuan funds they raise to fix-income securities, with investments in stocks and equity funds accounting for no more than 20 percent.

As the world's largest offshore yuan trading center, Hong Kong currently contributes to most of the RQFII funds and now possesses 200 billion yuan ($32.08 billion) quotas, according to the CSRC.

The regulator also said it has been considering to launch RQFII in Taiwan.

China launched the RQFII scheme in December 2011 to allow a maximum of 20 billion yuan worth of exchange-traded-fund raised offshore to be invested in the domestic capital market. The investment quota has been gradually increased to 270 billion yuan.