China moving gradually towards more flexible forex regime: Zhou

Zhou Xiaochuan, Governor of the People's Bank of China, the central bank, said Saturday that China 's foreign exchange policy is clear and China is gradually moving towards Renminbi capital account convertibility.

"We are gradually moving towards more flexibility with the regime," said Zhou at a seminar held here on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank annual meetings.

Zhou said that, in 1993, China had and decided to promote foreign exchange mechanism reform, but the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis stopped China's steps for several years. In 2002, Chinese government reiterated that the country would continue the move to realize Renminbi capital account convertibility.

Zhou cited some preconditions which he thought are important in China's consideration of forex regime, namely, macroeconomic policy, prices of financial products, real protection of private property rights, and political stability.

Zhou didn't give the timetable of foreign exchange regime reform, but said that the issue has been listed in the China's 11th Five-Year-Plan (2006-2010).

Source: Xinhua