Offshore payments in renminbi grew in value by 17.4 times since October 2010, SWIFT says in its monthly RMB Tracker report.
On average, other currencies grew 1.1 times since October 2010. Apart from the RMB, only the Russian ruble enjoyed a significant increase, yet it grew just 3.2 times in the same period.
Since June last year, the number of countries processing RMB payments has increased 40% from 65 to 91, and the number of institutions increased 60% from 617 to 983. Renminbi is now the 16th most used currency in the world, after the South African rand, up from 35th in October 2010. The top five RMB payments banks increased their RMB relationships 68% from 91 to 153 since June 2011.
The report is good news for China, which has been aggressively trying to promote the renminbi as a global currency alongside the dollar, beginning in 2009 with the liberalization of offshore RMB trading in Hong Kong. In February, a SWIFT-led industry group concerned with the difficulty of straight-through-processing of RMB developed guidelines for best-practice methods for offshore RMB trading, concluding that SWIFT MT and ISO 15022 messages should be the transaction standard. They also agreed on a code for the internal separation firms use between offshore and onshore RMB.
Several banks, including Bank of America Merrill Lynch and BNP Paribas, have expanded their RMB offerings recently, and Clearstream and Euroclear now offer renminbi settlement. According to a survey by Standard Chartered published in January, the popularity of the RMB as a settlement currency is growing in Asia, with 37% of the 529 executives surveyed saying they use or plan to use it.
(OS)