China sees rising capital inflows

BEIJING - China saw rising capital inflows as banks bought more foreign currency than they sold for clients between September and December last year, the country's regulator said on Friday.

But this can not definitively indicate a quickening flow of speculative money into China, according to a statement posted on the website of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange.

Chinese banks bought more foreign currency than they sold for clients in December, with net purchases or surpluses at $54.3 billion, the fourth straight month of surpluses and the highest monthly net purchases last year.

In the whole year of 2012, net foreign exchange purchases stood at $110.6 billion, of which $86.9 billion, or 79 percent, were spent from September to December, the statement said.

The figures reflected bank clients' increased willingness to swap foreign currency into local currency at the end of last year.

In 2012, bank-to-client forex saw a first deficit in April at $3.7 billion and then shifted between deficits and surpluses every month before maintaining surpluses from September.

The regulator cited many factors for the rising capital inflows, including stabilizing Chinese economy, progress in Europe's tackling of its debt crisis and quickening approvals on foreign investment under the qualified foreign institutional investor quotas.

The regulator warned, however, that impacts of the global crisis are lingering and the major economies' loose monetary policies and low interests rates will push up global liquidity, investors' appetites for risks and stimuli for global speculative capital to flow into China.