Beijing starts to pay for forex ‘sterilisation’ By Richard McGregor in Beijing
Published: January 31 2008 17:19 | Last updated: February 1 2008 01:17
・・・To keep the renminbi stable, the People’s Bank of China buys nearly all the incoming foreign currency, invests it, and then tries to “sterilise” the monetary impact in China by issuing local currency bills to take the funds out of circulation.
High interest rates in the US, and lower rates at home, meant that the dollars invested by Beijing in the US earned the central bank more than it was paying out in ★local currency bills.★
But the monetary policy cycles have now abruptly reversed. Rates are falling in the US but rising in China, where the government is tightening credit to fight inflation and cool some sectors of the economy.
As a result, China’s central bank will be paying about 250 basis points more on the bills it issues at home than it gets on US Treasuries – a gap that grew with the US Federal Reserve’s cut on Wednesday.
Simple mathematics suggests that Beijing is losing billions of dollars as a result, an amount amplified if the impact of China’s appreciating currency is taken into account.
Such losses, were they to be credibly tallied, could easily become a significant political issue in China, where there is perennial and often sharp-edged debate over policies blamed for a loss of state wealth.