With a team from the International Monetary Fund currently in China as part of the review over whether to include the Chinese yuan in its basket of currencies, China’s Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has added four more organizations, bringing the total to 285 firms approved, into the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (QFII) program.
The latest QFIIs are the Bank of Taiwan, Brunei Investment Agency, Spring Capital (HK), and Allianz Global Investors (TW) Ltd. Despite no additional quota after the city hit its cap in 2014, Amundi was granted an RQFII license in Hong Kong.
In order to calibrate and gradually open the capital account, the Chinese government introduced the QFII and RQFII (Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor) programs in 2003 and 2011 respectively. These carefully controlled vehicles give overseas investors the right to move quotas of money into the account, to encourage controllable flows.
China's currency, the Yuan, is convertible for trade purposes under the current account, while the capital account, which covers portfolio investment and borrowing, is still largely controlled by the state over concerns of abrupt capital flows in and out of the country.
At the end of May overseas institutions received QFII quotas amounting to 74.47 billion US dollars. The volume under the RQFII scheme totaled 382.7 billion Yuan.
