Yuan trading band 'appropriate' for now: official
The yuan's daily trading band is "appropriate" for the time being but could be widened in the future, a vice-governor of China's central bank said in an interview published Monday.
The yuan is currently allowed to rise or fall by up to 0.5 percent against the dollar within a given trading day, from a central parity rate set daily by the People's Bank of China.
In June, the central bank pledged to loosen its grip on the yuan and allow the currency to trade more freely against the dollar, and some had speculated that Beijing would widen the trading band to make the yuan more flexible.
But PBOC vice-governor Hu Xiaolian said in an interview with the Century Weekly magazine that the current band is "quite appropriate" for now.
"Judging from the development direction, it could be expanded in the future -- this can be studied and discussed," she said, according to excerpts of the interview posted on the magazine's website.
China is under international pressure to allow the yuan to appreciate, amid criticism from US lawmakers and others that the unit is undervalued by as much as 40 percent, giving Chinese exporters an unfair advantage.
Last week, the International Monetary Fund released a staff report which charged that the yuan was "substantially" undervalued despite Beijing's policy change in June.
In July 2005, China freed the yuan from an 11-year-old peg to the dollar and moved to a tightly managed floating exchange rate.
The yuan had been effectively pegged at about 6.8 to the dollar since mid-2008, when the global financial crisis started to bite, until the June announcement.
Since the policy change, the yuan has gained more than 0.7 percent against the greenback.
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