OREANDA-NEWS. January 16, 2014. According to an ICBC announcement, the Bank’s Singapore Branch earnestly fulfilled the responsibilities and obligations as a RMB clearing bank in Singapore in 2013, so that RMB clearing business continued rapid growth and RMB products were enriched constantly. This therefore promoted and bolstered the quick and sound development of offshore RMB market in Singapore.

According to the statistics, the RMB clearing bank in Singapore acted by ICBC Singapore Branch totally concluded 38,000 RMB clearing transactions in 2013, involving a clearing amount of RMB2.6 trillion. There were 900 clearing transactions at most for a single day, and the highest clearing amount for a single day reached RMB80 billion. 67 commercial banks opened RMB interbank current accounts with the RMB clearing bank in Singapore. Specifically, RMB financing transactions conducted with the clearing bank amounted to RMB140 billion and foreign exchange trading volume came to over RMB60 billion. Meanwhile, ICBC Singapore Branch rapidly advanced its RMB business, achieving more than RMB150 billion cross-border RMB settlements. Furthermore, some central banks in surrounding countries also opened RMB accounts with the RMB clearing bank in Singapore to deposit Renminbi converted from US dollar reserves. It indicates Renminbi has begun to play the role as a reserve currency.

On the basis of performing the responsibilities and obligations as a RMB clearing bank in an earnest manner, ICBC Singapore Branch proactively cultivated and expanded local markets to strive for facilitating the blossom of RMB market. Singapore Branch vigorously strengthened the policy publicity on RMB business by preparing the English versions of main cross-border RMB policies issued by People’s Bank of China for the convenience of overseas customers. Moreover, it held a large number of promotion and marketing events on RMB clearing business in local markets, RMB clearing business roadshows in surrounding countries of Southeast Asia, as well as promotion and marketing events on cross-border RMB business to corporate customers, to continuously enhance the acceptability of overseas participating banks and enterprises to RMB business. At the same time, ICBC Singapore Branch designed RMB direct investment, cross-border RMB loan granting, offshore RMB syndicated loans on bulk commodities, bi-directional cash pool business in Shanghai free trade zone and other schemes for many local customers, transnational companies and Chinese-funded enterprises in Singapore based on the latest cross-border RMB policies. These could help enterprises obtain more convenience in the process of trading and investment by RMB. Besides, ICBC Singapore Branch established a debt capital team, which participated in and completed issuance of RMB bonds. The team successfully accomplished the issuance of “Lion City bonds” of RMB2 billion in November, which was also the largest RMB bond issuance in Singapore market so far and received active response from the market.

In the opinions of insiders, offshore RMB business has presented a sound development trend featuring stable and rapid growth, along with the gradual emergence of unique advantages of RMB market in Singapore and increasing recognition and acceptability of various market participants to Renminbi. In future, as the cross-border RMB innovation policies including RQFII, Shanghai free trade zone, industrial parks in Singapore and Suzhou as well as Tianjin eco-city will be continued to put into practice, the Sino-Singapore bilateral cooperation in RMB business will be further reinforced. Under such background, the advantages of RMB clearing bank will become prominent and play a key role in the building process of the offshore RMB center in Singapore.