By Ajmal Khan Yousafzai
ISLAMABAD: China International Import Expo (CIIE) has reaffirmed the China’s commitment to open its borders to the outside world and aligned with the vision of the Belt & Road initiative.
This was stated by Shaikh Muhammad Shariq Chief representative of National Bank of Pakistan in Beijing, according to a report published by China Economic Net (CEN) on Tuesday.
He was addressing the Industrial Investment and International Financial Cooperation Forum held at the Expo. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and People’s Bank of China (PBC) made the currency swap arrangement in 2011, for three years, amounting to 10 billion yuan and 140 billion Pakistani rupees.
As a result of this, he said bilateral trade and investment witnessed significant growth and contributed to further strengthening the close and special relationship between the two countries and this was the second currency swap agreement that Pakistan had signed with any country.
“In 2018, the swap was extended for a period of three years, and the size was doubled to 20 billion yuan or 351 billion Pakistani rupees, as China became the largest trading partner, and the bilateral trade increased on a yearly basis”, Shaikh Shariq added.
Shariq told CEN that in 2018, the Long Term Plan (LTP) of CPEC was launched which turned China-Pakistan bilateral relations into long-term strategic economic partnership and the scope of the cooperation was extended in various new areas, including the financial sector. Shaikh Muhammad Shariq further said that on the regulatory side, it was decided to strengthen cooperation in financial regulation, by promoting monetary cooperation between the central banks, research to expand the amount of currency swap.
This explored to enrich the scope; promote settlement in domestic currencies to reduce the demand for third-party currency. ICBC & Bank of China, Karachi branches are providing RMB clearing & settlement services in Pakistan.
