How can the Shanghai Free Trade Zone continue to make efforts?, As the "vanguard of financial reform and opening up"
Over the past decade, the Free Trade Zone and the Lingang New Area have played the role of pioneers in financial reform and experimental fields for innovation.
On September 15th, at the press conference on the 10th anniversary of the opening and operation of the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone held by the Municipal Government Information Office, Sun Hui, Deputy Director of the Shanghai Headquarters of the People's Bank of China, introduced four of the most representative financial system innovation measures.
Firstly, financial innovation based on free trade accounts has played an important role in benefiting enterprises, promoting reform, and preventing risks. Since the launch of the free trade account service, the cumulative annual growth rate of domestic and foreign currency cross-border income and expenditure equivalent to RMB has been 35%; The average annual growth rate of RMB equivalent for overseas non resident enterprises handling cross-border income and expenditure through free trade accounts is 104.1%.
Secondly, it has played a leading role in cross-border RMB business innovation. The Shanghai Free Trade Zone has taken the lead in pilot projects such as RMB overseas loans, cross-border two-way RMB fund pools, and cross-border e-commerce RMB settlements, forming a number of pioneering and leading innovative achievements. The willingness of enterprises to use RMB settlements continues to increase, and the total cross-border RMB receipts and expenditures in the Free Trade Zone have grown by an average of 33% annually.
Thirdly, we will continue to deepen the reform of foreign exchange management. The implementation rules for the pilot reform of foreign exchange management in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, which has been gradually promoted from version 1.0 to version 4.0, have been successively released, involving more than 20 innovative measures, making the Shanghai Free Trade Zone always at the forefront of foreign exchange management reform in the country, and the scale of foreign-related income and expenditure has significantly increased. In 2022, the total foreign revenue and expenditure of enterprises in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone reached 1.18 trillion US dollars, an increase of 8.5 times compared to 2014.
The fourth is to create a new highland for innovation in foreign-related financial services in the Lingang New Area. Pilot projects will be launched to facilitate cross-border RMB settlement for high-quality enterprises, facilitate cross-border transfer of domestic trade financing assets, cancel the management of foreign direct investment capital accounts, and register one-time external debts for enterprises. In 2022, the first batch of high-level opening-up pilot projects for cross-border trade and investment in China will be further launched, with 13 high-level opening-up measures covering cross-border trade and investment and financing launched in one go. So far, the pilot business has exceeded 40 billion US dollars.
Sun Hui stated that in the next step, the Shanghai headquarters of the People's Bank of China will closely focus on implementing the strategy of upgrading the free trade zone, continue to promote the cross-border use and convertibility reform of the RMB, guide and promote financial institutions to make good use of characteristic financial services such as free trade accounts, accelerate scene integration, and better meet the cross-border financial service needs of the real economy. We will continue to deepen the reform of foreign exchange management, increase the pilot program for high-level opening up of cross-border trade and investment in the Lingang New Area, and steadily expand the coverage of the pilot program to facilitate cross-border trade and investment.