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A stronger yuan in regional trade
(China Daily/Agencies)
Updated: 2009-11-23 08:02
Last December, China announced pilot programs to settle trade deals in yuan between the country's two economic powerhouses, Guangdong province and the Yangtze River Delta (which includes Shanghai) and the two special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao.
A similar arrangement was proposed for exporters in Guangxi and Yunnan province in southwestern China to settle trade in yuan with ASEAN.
In April, China announced a pilot program to settle cross-border trade deals in yuan in five cities - Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Dongguan.
Currently, China has signed cooperation agreements for bilateral trade settlement with the central banks of Laos and Vietnam in ASEAN.
Wider use of the yuan
Representatives of the Vietnamese trading company Vietnam Charity Trading Company Ltd has attended the expo for five years. It began trading with China 22 years ago and has been exporting 70 percent of its products to China.
The company buys materials from Laos and sells products to China and other countries, in which dollars, yuan and Vietnamese Dong are adopted.
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"I really hope there is a single currency like the euro to cut off the cost of exchanging currency and to make the whole process easier," she said.
"I hope the yuan could be the one, as it has been stable and welcomed by the ASEAN people," she said, adding that the yuan is very popular in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
Grace See Choo, managing director of Grace Cosmetics, a Malaysian cosmetics company, said her company has been importing packing materials from China since 2000. "We have always traded in yuan, which operates well," she said.
"China is a huge market for us. Guangxi's market alone is larger than that in our whole country. We prefer yuan as the trading currency if the Chinese partner wants the same," Choo said.
The company now is looking for a Chinese agent to explore Chinese markets, she added.
Although yuan has gained a reputation among ASEAN people, efforts of the 10 nations' central banks still are necessary to commit to a consensus of popularizing renminbi, said Teng Chong of Guangxi Beibu Gulf Bank.
Xu Ningning said the three FTAs between ASEAN and China, Japan and the Republic of Korea, respectively, will build a wider platform for renminbi exchanges.
"Although it needs time to build a new trade market or a new currency market, the CAFTA is believed to create new space for the regionalization of renminbi," Xu said.
