Hello, everyone. Today I'm very pleased to take part in this meeting and share my point of view about the RMB hub with members of the finance committee and also with all the experts from related industries.
Today I would like to talk about the following aspects of the RMB hub and RMB market.
The first is about who we are.
Let me give you a brief introduction to CCB. China Construction Bank is one of the leading commercial banks in China and also the second largest bank by assets of U.S. dollars—$2.7 trillion U.S., as of September 2014. CCB Toronto is the first Chinese branch in Canada, which means we are the home bank of China Construction Bank.
We were granted certain awards by several organizations, including recognition by The Banker that we are the second by tier 1 capital among the top 1,000 world banks.
The second topic is offshore RMB markets.
The Bank of Canada and the People's Bank of China—our central bank—have already signed a deal of $30 billion Canadian in a bilateral currency swap agreement. Meanwhile, China also provided Canadian institutional investors with 50 billion yuan. We call this the RQFII quota.
The offshore RMB market can be developed through various channels. The first one is the swap agreement. The first swap agreement was signed with the Bank of Korea, for the amount of 180 billion RMB. Since then, China's central bank has dealt with 33 central banks in the world, including those of Hong Kong, Australia, and the U.K., and as of October 2014 the total swap amount is around 3 trillion RMB.
The second channel is the RQFII. The first RQFII were awarded to nine Hong Kong banks. To date, 117 institutional investors in France, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and the U.K. are taking advantage of the RQFII.
The last channel is the RMB clearings. The first clearing centre was announced on November 4, 2011, in Hong Kong. There are currently 11 RMB clearing centres, including Toronto.
The slide I am displaying shows that the RMB market has helped bring consistent growth in the bilateral RMB trading. For example, since the establishment of the RMB centre in the U.K. in 2013, the trade volume has increased significantly, from $370 billion U.S. to $1,473 billion U.S.
The third topic is about benefits to Canada.
Establishing the first North American offshore RMB centre in Toronto provided a significant jolt in promoting Toronto as one of the larger world financial centres. The benefits include: first, reducing the current exchange cost; second, promoting the diversification of Canadian capital markets; and third, the enhancement of the competitiveness of Canadian financial markets.