(ATF) On April 8, Qingdao Bank, with approval from the China National Interbank Funding Centre, passed a business check to join “Bond Connect” as a qualified institution. It is the only bank in Shandong Province that has obtained this qualification.
Now foreign investors can invest in local government bonds, corporate bonds, asset-backed bonds, financial bonds and other bonds through the Bank of Qingdao, which, according to the official release, can further support the economic build-up of Shandong Province and Qingdao City, and promote Shandong’s accelerated integration into the international capital market.
According to data released by the People’s Bank of China, the bond market issued a total of 12 trillion bonds in the first quarter, an increase of 14% year-on-year, and a balance of 103 trillion yuan, an increase of 4% from the end of the previous year.
As of the end of March, some 520 overseas institutional investors entered the domestic interbank bond market through “Bond Connect”. They had a held debt totalling 2.26 trillion yuan. The net increase in holdings by overseas institutions was 59.7 billion yuan in the first quarter.
As more and more countries adopt a zero interest rate policy and China’s domestic bond market has obvious investment value, so “Bond Connect” will become an important financing platform for foreign investment.
The relevant person in charge of Bank of Qingdao told reporters that in the future, it will closely follow the pace of yuan internationalization and the opening of China’s capital markets.
