The United Arab Emirates has signed a deal with China to set up a clearing hub for the Chinese currency Yuan, the second such centre in the Middle East.
The UAE clearing hub for the Chinese currency, which will satisfy growing needs among UAE-based firms and banks alike, will be the second in the Middle East after Qatar set up the region's first Renminbi clearing hub this April.
The UAE's central bank said that the agreement was signed while Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan was in China for an official visit earlier this month, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.
No specific date was given when the hub will open for trading. The UAE, a major oil supplier, and China also renewed a 35-billion RMB ($5.42 billion) currency swap deal during the visit.
The UAE was also included in RMB Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor scheme. Known as RQFI, the Gulf state was given a quota of 55 billion RMB ($8.53 billion or 31.3 billion UAE dirham).
Earlier in the year, ICBC, the world's largest bank, listed a $500 million bond, the first dollar bond by a Chinese lender in the Middle East, on the Nasdaq Dubai, the international capital market which is located in the DIFC.
Zhou Xiaodong, general manager ICBC Middle East, has said that he hopes for more Chinese firms to follow and to list bonds on Dubai in order to create a liquid market in Dubai as a financial link between the Middle East and East Asia.
In 2014, China, surpassing India, became the biggest trade partner of the UAE as bilateral trade hit nearly $50 billion dollars.
Government officials estimate bilateral trade to have surpassed $60 billion this year, the Xinhua report said. Now, more than 4,000 Chinese firms run branches in the UAE, among them the four biggest Chinese lenders ICBC, China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China and Bank of China. Over 300,000 Chinese citizens reside in the Gulf Arabian state.
China’s telecom official faces anti-corruption probe
The head of one of China’s big three telecom companies is being investigated for alleged disciplinary violations, the latest high-ranking official to come under scanner in President Xi Jinping’s campaign to weed out corruption from the ruling Communist Party. Chang Xiaobing, 58, was CPC chief at China Unicom before assuming his post at China Telecom in August this year in a major reshuffle to revamp the country’s three telecom networks which had a massive subscriber base figuring among the top of telecom firms of the world. “Chang is being investigated for suspected for “severe disciplinary violations,” CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) announced on Sunday.
China Unicom and China Telecom are two of China’s top three telecom service providers besides China Mobile which together cater to over 590 million mobile phones and 247 million fixed phones. Chang is one of the hundreds of officials who faced anti-graft probes commissioned by CPC after Xi came to power in 2013. The drive has since expanded, with Xi warning that prevalent corruption threatens the one-party rule. The CPC is the sole governing party of China since the country was formed in 1949.