US and Chinese officials are to meet on Monday for discussions that will include foreign exchange, the US Treasury Department said on Thursday. "Officials from the People's Bank of China will visit with Treasury Department officials on Monday, May 9, for regular technical discussions on economic and financial issues, including foreign exchange," a Treasury Department official said in a statement.
The meeting comes as speculation runs high that China may be near a revaluation of its yuan currency, which is pegged in a narrow band against the dollar. In recent weeks, the United States has ratcheted up the volume of calls on China to float the value of the yuan more freely.
"The PRC is ready. It should move to a more flexible (yuan) regime now," Bobby Pittman, a US Treasury deputy assistant secretary told the Asian Development Bank's annual meeting in Istanbul this week, where China's Finance Minister Jin Renqinq was in attendance.
Jin said Beijing was determined to reform the yuan currency regime, but intense market speculation on the exchange rate made it very difficult for Beijing to move now.
Mid-level US Treasury and Chinese central bank officials have been meeting on a regular basis to discuss economic topics including foreign exchange, a Treasury official acknowledged on Thursday.
"With regularity. Every few months," a Treasury official told reporters in an e-mail message when asked how many times such meetings had been held in the past.
Officials taking part in the meetings are at the deputy assistant secretary level or below, the US official said. In the bureaucratic hierarchy at Treasury, deputy assistant secretaries fall beneath assistant secretaries, under-secretaries, a deputy secretary and the secretary.
Meanwhile, an investment advisor on China said officials from China's central bank are in New York to meet with top bankers and investors to discuss the country's plans for currency revaluation.
The New York delegation is led by Gao Cailin, director of open market operations at the People's Bank of China (PBOC), who is detailing the progress to date on the overhaul of the country's financial system.
"It's a signal that revaluation is getting closer," said the advisor, Paul Markowski, the president of New York-based Global Strategies Analysis Group, who attended a briefing in New York.
"The team has been to Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley. They will be meeting over the next two days with key institutional investors to explain what China is doing and the progress made so far," he added, speaking from New York.
China's yuan, or renminbi is pegged in a narrow band around 8.28 per dollar.