Increased free international use of the RMB

The international use of the RMB is again "big news". Recently, the Association for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) released a monthly report on the RMB, showing that in November 2023, in the global ranking of payment currencies based on the amount of statistics, the RMB surpassed the Japanese yen, rising to the position of the world's fourth most active currency, accounting for 4.61 per cent of the total. This percentage is a new high in the last five years, surpassing the percentage at the beginning of 2022.

Since the launch of RMB settlement for cross-border trade in 2009, the internationalisation of the RMB has flourished after more than 10 years of development. Nearly half of the total cross-border transactions carried out by financial institutions, enterprises and individuals in China are now settled in RMB. Deposits in the major offshore RMB market are nearly RMB 1.5 trillion, and RMB-denominated financial products are becoming increasingly abundant.2022 In May 2012, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) further raised the weight of the RMB in the SDR from the 10.92 per cent set in 2016 to 12.28 per cent, reflecting the international community's recognition of the increased degree of RMB's free accessibility.

Source: China Economic Daily News