Yuan Starts Making Exports Cheaper
December 3, 2008
The Chinese currecy yuan (renminbi) was in fall for the last 3 years until the Chinese economy started to be hit by global crisis. The currency has been stable for the last 3 months, but as the global financial crisis deepens and further affects Chinese economy, the yuan also started to decline,say, making the exports cheaper. Here is the news from Xinhua :
Yuan falls on talk currency decline is to help exports
By XINHUA
CHINA’S currency, the yuan, fell by the daily limit against the United States dollar for a second day yesterday, its fourth straight daily decline.
The yuan finished at 6.8870 per US dollar on the over-the-counter market, having declined 0.5 percent against its central parity rate. The central parity rate, announced by the China Foreign Exchange Trading System, was 6.8527 yuan per US dollar yesterday, compared with 6.8505 yuan on Monday.
On Monday, the yuan also fell by the 0.5 percent daily limit on the over-the-counter market to end at 6.8848 to the US dollar. Monday’s move marked the yuan’s biggest weakening since China ended the peg to the US dollar in July 2005.
The yuan’s central parity rate is based on a weighted average of market makers’ price inquiries before the market opens on each business day. The rate is allowed to fluctuate within a band of 0.5 percent on either side of the mid-point.
Zhao Qingming, a senior analyst at China Construction Bank, said the yuan depreciation resulted directly from a stronger US dollar.
“In addition, China has announced many pro-active fiscal and monetary policies to stimulate the economy, which fuels market speculation that the yuan might depreciate against the US dollar to help increase exports,” he said.
Ou Minggang, director of the International Finance Research Center at the China Foreign Affairs University, attributed the yuan’s depreciation to recent interest-rate cuts in China.
Last week, the People’s Bank of China, the central bank, cut the benchmark one-year yuan loan rate to 5.58 percent from 6.66 percent and the one-year yuan deposit rate to 2.52 percent from 3.60 percent. The 108-basis-point cuts were the fourth since mid-September and the largest since the late 1990s.
Ou said the weaker yuan could help support China’s exports.
Monday’s unusual yuan move buoyed shares of Chinese textile firms yesterday, betting the weaker yuan could help textile exports.
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China’s inflation cools at last
October 14, 2008
Inflation rates are crucially important for China’s economy. To me, it is the most decisive indicator in shaping government policies on economy, finance, trade etc.
For example, the soaring inflation at the beginning of the year was the main reason behind the tightening monetary policy which squeezes credits for factories, makes trade policies restrictive, quickens the appreciation of chinese currency. So every company making business with China needs to follow the inflation gadget to foresee possible risks and opportunities.
China’s inflation cools at last
By Lydia Chen (Sanghai Daily)
CHINA’S inflation rate dropped to the slowest pace since June 2007 with smaller gains in food prices, a boost to policy makers working on adjusting macroeconomic policies to support the country’s economic growth.
The consumer price index, a broad measure of inflation, rose 4.9 percent in August from a year earlier, after gaining 6.3 percent in July, the National Bureau of Statistics said this morning.
Food costs, accounting for a third of the CPI basket, surged 10.3 percent year on year last month. Within the category, meat and poultry prices soared 8 percent in August.
The cost of pork, the nation’s staple meat, increased 1 percent last month from a year ago while cooking oil prices rose 22.7 percent. Vegetable prices were down 0.5 percent last month from a year ago. Grain prices gained 8 percent in the period.
The combined CPI grew 7.3 percent from January to August, the bureau said.
Consumer-price inflation has slowed for four months. February’s 8.7 percent pace was the fastest in 12 years. The central bank’s target for the year is 4.8 percent, the same as the actual rate in 2007.
But producer-price inflation advanced 10.1 percent in August after rising 10 percent in July. The August jump was the fastest pace since at least 1996, according to the bureau today.
The faster producer inflation rate may lead policy makers to introduce more balanced measures to boost growth against the risk that inflation will accelerate again.
China may adopt tax cuts, a slower pace of yuan appreciation and more easing of lending restrictions to protect jobs and avoid an economic slump as export demand falters.
China’s economy expanded 10.1 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, slowing for a fourth straight quarter, as exports cooled. Many economists said the growth may ease to 9 percent this year.
Profit growth for listed companies slumped in the first half, helping push the key stock index in the Shanghai market down nearly 60 percent so far this year. Weaker overseas demand, rising costs and a strengthening currency have put pressure on exporters of shoes, toys and clothes.
Economists expect China’s monetary policy will steadily turn more growth-friendly, given the concerns and moderating inflation.
In July, the central bank eased restrictions on how much banks can lend. It raised the 2008 loan quotas for national banks by 5 percent and for regional lenders by 10 percent, according to reports by the Goldman Sachs Group Inc, BNP Paribas SA, and the China Merchants Bank Co.
The People’s Bank of China has kept interest rates unchanged this year and hasn’t increased the reserve ratio for banks — the proportion of deposits that lenders are required to set aside — since June.
The Chinese yuan has climbed only 0.2 percent against the dollar this quarter after a 6.5 percent advance in the first half. Gains hurt exporters by making their products more expensive and less attractive in overseas markets.
The government has already cut taxes on exports of textiles and garments and encouraged more lending to small and medium-sized businesses. Officials are working on a plan for as much as 400 billion yuan (US$58 billion) in tax cuts and spending to prevent an economic slump, according to economists and reports in domestic news media.
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Rise of yuan – where now for China’s currency?
October 7, 2008
An article published in Xinhua by Zhu Yifan about the course and effects of being rebalanced Renminbi. The writer taking a look at Purchasing Power Parity, Exports,trade surplus and where is the end! Here you can read below:
(Xinhua) — Coming back from a short business trip to Hong Kong, Clare Hu opened her purse and found that she had unintentionally spent half of her monthly salary while browsing through shops and department stores there.
“There are a variety of goods there, and they are much cheaper,” says Hu, a media worker in Shanghai. Her colleagues bought even more. The buys ranged from 2, 000-yuan cameras to a box of milk tea.
Mainland tourist shopping sprees in Hong Kong are becoming a tradition, but such behavior has become much more reckless as yuan has risen in value, increasing its purchase power.
China’s currency, the Renminbi or yuan, has appreciated 20 percent against the U.S. dollar since it was unpegged from the dollar in 2005. The Hong Kong dollar, which is still pegged to the U.S. dollar, has weakened from 1.06 to 0.88 to the yuan.
INCREASED PURCHASING POWER
“With the rapid growth of the Chinese economy, the outbound travel market is expanding,” says Grace Pan, head of travel and leisure research at Nielsen.
Chinese travelers spend on average 2,597 to 3,506 U.S. dollars on an overseas trip, with the amount varying by region, according to the Nielsen China Outbound Travel Monitor report.
Not only are mainland residents traveling abroad to take advantage of the rising yuan, they can sense the change in the domestic market. Prices of imported vehicles, which have been high for years, have been falling slowly for the first five months this year.
According to National Development and Reform Commission monitoring data on consumer product prices in 36 large and medium-sized cities nationwide, the prices of imported vehicles dropped 1.95 percent in May from the previous month,
China imported 171,000 automobiles in the first five months, up59 percent compared with the same period last year. In 2007, the volume of automobile imports saw an annual rise of 37.9 percent. Part of the reason is that international automobile giants made stronger efforts in China this year to make up for reduced sales in the North American market. Chinese consumers, with a currency that is becoming stronger daily, are believed to be becoming more open to buying imported cars.
The market of imported snacks and other foods has been rising at an annual rate of 15 percent in the past five years, according to report on the industrial website sponsored by China National Food Industry Association (CNFIA).
EXPORTS PAINS
In contrast to consumers, exporters have been hurt by the appreciation, which has eroded their profits to crisis point.
“In only half a year, our export cost was pushed up by 10 percent and profit reduced by 40 percent,” says Shen Yaoqing, vice president of Shangtex Holding Co., a major Shanghai-based textile manufacturer that exports about 2 billion U.S. dollars worth of products annually. “Our company is on the brink of failure.”
The problem of Shangtex reflects the dire situation suffered by the export-oriented processing trade that employs up to 40 million people.
Exports have been hailed as one of the country’s three economic growth engines, together with consumption and investment. But the engine is slowing with reduced overseas orders. China’s monthly trade surplus dropped to 20.2 billion U.S. dollars in May, down 10percent from the same month last year, according to the General Administration of Customs.
CHANGE BEHIND THE SCENES
The reverberations of the rapid appreciation of the yuan are deep and complicated. The change was not as simple as a boost in buying power or a squeezed trade surplus.
Behind it lies a shift in the country’s overall economic strategy, driven by recognition that the current export structure won’t support economic development the way it used to.
“China’s currency had been kept in an undervalued state since the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, and the government in effect used it to finance the imports and exports sector at the cost of its non-trading industries,” says Professor Pan Yingli, of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University management school.
A large profit margin was then created between low production costs paid in undervalued yuan, and the high revenues reaped by selling these products to international clients.
This brought prosperity for the country, but took a heavy toll with high pollution and energy consumption. Too much labor-intensive industry with low-efficiency and little added value stretched supply by demanding evermore manufacturing materials, which pushed up upstream prices. The heavy reliance on overseas markets was detrimental to the establishment of an overall balanced industrial structure in China.
It also created a persistent gap between the well-developed coastal east, which thrived by trading with the outside, and the poor central and western regions in China.
“The structural conflict has accumulated to a stage that demands a solution,” says Pan. “Strengthening the yuan is the rational choice as it helps stabilize inflation and leads to the optimization of industrial structure.”
Studies in east China’s Jiangsu Province found the composition of exported products started to change with appreciation. High-tech goods, machinery and electronic products started to take a greater share at the expense of labor-intensive products, such as textiles, garments and toys.
In the Pearl River delta area, 2,331 shoe makers have gone out of business, and 2,428 remain. Shoe exports were down 15.5 percent to 1.35 billion pairs in the first five months compared with the same period last year, but the value gained 9.4 percent to 3.97 billion U.S. dollars.
WHERE IS THE END
This year, the appreciation has accelerated, breaking through the 7-yuan mark against the dollar in early April before it weakened slightly on a stronger dollar in May. However, it soon regained strength and broke through the 6.9-yuan mark to hit a record 6.8919 to the dollar on June 17. By then, it had appreciated almost 6 percent in 2008 alone.
As China’s currency became increasingly stronger, Liu Yuhui, researcher with Chinese Academy of Social Sciences noticed a dangerous undercurrent of money flows. Observation of statistical data showed that “hot money,” or international short-term speculative funds, is speeding up its flow into China in the first quarter, which was closely related in an anticipation of faster appreciation of the yuan.
No official figures was released concerning the “hot money”, but analysts smelt a rat from the strange phenomenon that combines a ballooning forex reserves and declining current-account surplus and reduced expenditure of foreign investment in China.
During the first five months of 2008, forex reserves increased by 18.7 percent year-on-year, or 268.7 billion U.S. dollars, SAFE figures showed. Jiang Zheng, a macro-economist at a Beijing-based securities firm, has discovered that there was an unexplained 147.9 billion U.S. dollars in the forex reserve increase figure after deducting the trade surplus and the FDI from it.
The concentration of international speculative fund in China’s domestic market would pose major threats to a stable exchange rate of yuan, and also rob a country of effective control of its macroeconomy, says Liu.
Given the complexity of the situation, opinion is divided over whether the appreciation will continue, or whether there will be a one-off appreciation to end the uncertainty. Guesses are made at the so-called ceiling of the yuan.
Central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan says China would gradually expand the elasticity of the exchange rate, sending out the signal that Beijing would let the yuan fluctuate rather than rise unilaterally.
The fast appreciation of the yuan in the first half might not continue, and the concern over possible fallback of foreign trade could weigh against continuous further appreciation, says Peng Xingyun, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
“There are many factors in the market that affect supply and demand, which, if changed, would sway the exchange rates,” says Peng.
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Yuan set to regain strength
September 19, 2008
MARKET watchers predict the yuan to recover later this year as a rebound in the United States dollar is expected to lose steam.
The Chinese currency’s appreciation will continue later this year, said Jan Lambregts, a Rabobank economist. He said the government’s control of inflation and a long-term move toward a more flexible exchange rate regime will also back the yuan to climb later this year.
China’s consumer price index, the main gauge of inflation, slowed to 4.9 percent last month from 6.3 percent in July. But the producer price index inched up to 10.1 percent from July’s 10 percent.
Lambregts said the yuan may gain 8.2 percent for the whole of this year, with the currency’s rise slowing to 4 percent next year.
As soon as there is a pause in the US dollar’s rise globally, the People’s Bank of China, the central bank, may take the opportunity to allow the yuan to resume its gradual climb, according to traders
Source: China Daily
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Renminbi’s Rise: Necessary ?
September 1, 2008
One of the most infuluantial voices in making China’s economic policies said that “China did not need to accelerate the appreciation of the renminbi against the US dollar, according to an article published in the Financial Times.
The main point needs to be highlighted in the article is:
- China doesn’t need appreciation of Renminbi anymore because the Dollar will not weaken very much, and may get stronger.
The Chinese currency has appreciated by 7 per cent against the US dollar this year. But the pace of appreciation has slowed sharply over the last two months. In August, the renminbi even depreciated slightly against the dollar. This is only the second month that this has happened since China moved away from its dollar peg in 2005.
This year, China’s trade surplus is decreasing, but foreign reserve accumulation is increasing.
According to the FT, Mr Cheng Siwei, vice-chairman of the standing committee of National People’s Congress, warned that the strength of domestic consumption could not compensate for the weakness of investment and net exports. Although the government had introduced measures in July to loosen credit and reduce export taxes, “we need to consider fiscal policy action as well”, he said.
“Government revenue in-creased by 33.3 per cent in the first half of this year. But we have many big expenses like the Olympics and the aftermath of the earthquake. So I don’t think we can put a big sum of money to expand public spending. But we have put Rmb3.5bn ($512m) into subsidising small and medium-sized enterprises.”
You can read the original article: “Renminbi rise ‘less necessary’” By Martin Wolf in London and Geoff Dyer in Beijing.
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