Report: Financial transaction function of RMB needs to be strengthened

It is urgent for China to seize every opportunity to strengthen the financial transaction function of renminbi, a recent report says.

China must make full use of the dividends of the RMB joining the Special Drawing Rights, deepen domestic financial reform and strive to improve the international financial pricing and transaction functions of the currency, says the RMB Internationalization Report 2017.

The annual report, written by the International Monetary Institute at Renmin University of China, was presented during the 2017 International Monetary Forum, held from July 15-16 in Beijing.

Wu Xiaoqiu, vice president of Renmin University of China, says that China's financial market is becoming more and more internationalized and its influence globally is increasing.

"With the internationalization of RMB and the opening up of China's financial system, China will be not far from becoming a global financial center," he said.

The report says that financial market is the logistic support for foreign trade and capital export. RMB internationalization needs a mature international financial center. A complete international financial market for pricing and trading RMB can take shape in the order of short-term money market, medium-term bond market, and long-term multi-level equity market.

Moreover, overseas direct investment, which can expand the use of RMB in many ways and play an efficient leveraging role, can become an important facilitator of its internationalization. In the new situation where multinational corporations dominate international trade, expanding direct investment can consolidate China's trade position and provide markets and impetuses for domestically funded financial institutions to go global and develop offshore RMB business, the report says.

Last but not least, actively promoting the development of the international RMB bond market is an important way to build a smooth RMB circulation mechanism and further deepen the process of internationalization.

Therefore, China should vigorously build and develop the RMB bond market in order to improve the proportion of the currency in the international bond market. The RMB bond market will become China's main channel to provide safe assets for the world, the report says.