China sees strong growth in cross-border yuan trade

Trade transactions settled in China's yuan currency totalled 388 billion yuan ($58.4 billion) as of the end of November, the People's Bank of China said on Monday. Nearly all of that, or about 340 billion yuan, was conducted in the second half of this year, as Beijing vastly expanded a pilot scheme launched in mid-2009 to allow the settlement of imports and exports in yuan.
In a statement on its website (www.pbc.gov.cn), the central bank also said that cross-border investment and financing denominated in yuan amounted to more than 55 billion yuan during the same period. It did not specify whether these were flows into or out of China. China has declared an ambition to gradually make the yuan an international currency and has so far concentrated its efforts on expanding its use in trade settlement.