China's decision to widen its currency's trading band is a "useful step" but Beijing must still move more quickly to having the market set the currency's value, a US Treasury Department official said on Friday.
Alan Holmer, the Treasury's special envoy for China, said he would keep pressing the case for greater yuan flexibility at high-level economic talks between US and Chinese officials next week in Washington.
"The Treasury view is that this is a useful step towards greater flexibility and an eventual float of the currency," US Special Envoy for China Alan Holmer told a news briefing. "It's important now that Chinese authorities use the wider band and allow greater currency movement within each day and over time."
Holmer said, however, the Bush administration believes that the 7.9 percent appreciation of the yuan against the dollar since July 2005 is "not fast enough."
"We will continue to press the Chinese as we have over the course of a very extended time period to accelerate the appreciation of their currency," Holmer said.