Indonesia's RMB clearing bank opens to facilitate bilateral local currency settlement

China News Service, Jakarta, November 12 (Reporter Li Zhiquan) The opening ceremony of the Indonesian RMB Clearing Bank was held in Jakarta on the 12th. This will further facilitate Chinese and Indonesian companies to use RMB and Indonesian rupiah to carry out trade and investment.

China has been Indonesia's largest trading partner for 13 consecutive years. Zhang Hui, President of the Bank of China, said that with the increasingly close economic, trade and people-to-people exchanges between China and Indonesia, the demand for the use of RMB by market entities continues to rise. From January to September this year, the bank's domestic institutions' cross-border RMB settlement volume with Indonesia reached 60.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 34%.

Zhang Hui said that the bank will conscientiously perform its duties as Indonesia's RMB clearing bank, provide more Indonesian financial institutions with diversified services such as RMB account opening, fund clearing and settlement, RMB transactions, and liquidity support, and promote China-Indonesia trade and investment facilitation to a higher level.

Currently, Bank Indonesia has launched foreign currency instruments denominated in RMB in monetary operations. Destri Damayanti, Governor of the Bank of Indonesia, said that he will continue to deepen cooperation between Indonesia and China in the fields of economy, trade, investment, etc., further promote the use of RMB in the Indonesian foreign exchange market, and improve the construction of the RMB foreign exchange market to maintain financial stability and support economic activities.

Indonesian Economic Coordinating Minister Airlanga believes that the scale of trade between Indonesia and China is large, and it is of great significance to promote local currency settlement. The two sides use more currencies other than the U.S. dollar in bilateral trade, which will help reduce the impact of U.S. dollar fluctuations. It is hoped that Indonesian enterprises will make full use of the mechanism of the RMB clearing bank and its derivative financial instruments to broaden financing channels through RMB credit and the issuance of panda bonds, and further deepen the development of Indonesia's financial market.

Zhou Kan, charge d'affaires of the Chinese Embassy in Indonesia, said that compared with the huge scale and broad prospects of economic cooperation between China and Indonesia, there is still a lot of room for development in financial cooperation between the two countries. It is expected that the financial authorities and financial institutions of the two countries will work together to provide strong support for bilateral economic and trade cooperation.

During the ceremony, activities such as the release of RMB clearing banks and the signing of participating banks were also held. Bank of China is currently the bank with the largest RMB business in Indonesia and is also the main channel for local RMB clearing.