Reforms at Shanghai FTZ push financial opening

SHANGHAI - Pilot financial liberalization plans in Shanghai free trade zone (FTZ) will soon include a free trade account and a capital market for foreign investors.

Dai Haibo, deputy director of the FTZ administration committee, set a timetable for the launch of both the free trade account and crude oil futures on Tuesday, at a press conference in Shanghai.

Specific rules on the free trade account that allows full convertibility of the yuan and facilitates offshore financing will be rolled out in the second quarter.

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Trading of crude oil futures on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange will begin by the end of this year. Bringing crude oil futures to the FTZ is more complicated than authorities imagined and poses challenges to the law and tax codes. Nevertheless, Dia said the zone should boast a multi-tiered capital market for offshore investors.

The free trade account could turn the zone into a truly offshore market where capital can flow freely and the yuan be fully convertible.

It will help Chinese companies, especially those engaged in foreign trade, secure cheaper yuan-denominated funding offshore, where financing costs are lower than that on the Chinese mainland.

China's central bank has previously eased restrictions on overseas investment by individuals working in the FTZ, by allowing them to open account for overseas investment.

The move has sidestepped the Qualified Domestic Institutional Investors quota for overseas investment and amounts to partial opening of the capital account.

Six months after it was established in September 2013, the FTZ has launched key programs including easing cross-border use of the yuan, liberalizing interest rates on foreign currency loans, facilitating offshore financing and outbound investment.

By the end of February, a total of 1,383 financial institutions had registered in the zone. These include the Shanghai International Energy Exchange, 43 banks, securities and insurance firms, 102 equity financing and financial leasing firms and more than 1,000 investment and asset management firms.

The ceiling for the interest rate on foreign currency deposits of less than $3 billion was scrapped earlier this month. Bank of China handled the zone's first foreign deposit on March 1 at a negotiated rate between the bank and depositor. Other banks have started accepting small foreign deposits since then.