In a news conference held on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress at the Media Center in Beijing, Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said China might finish the process of easing regulations on interest rates within two years.
Zhou made the remarks after a government work report said last week that China plans to introduce a deposit insurance system, an important step for interest rate liberalization, this year.
As for the Chinese yuan's status in the global market, the governor was quoted by the Global Times newspaper as saying that there is still a long way ahead to realize the currency's internationalization,
China will first carry out reform plans to ease related regulations, he said.
According to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a global transaction services organization headquartered in Brussels, the yuan accounted for 1.39 percent of the global payments in January.
The comparable figure stood at 38.75 percent for the U.S. dollar, 33.51 percent for the euro and 9.38 percent for the British pound.
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com