Chinese yuan weakens to 6.7071 against dollar
Jul 04, 2022
Beijing [China], July 4 : The central parity rate of the Chinese currency weakened 208 pips to 6.7071 against the US dollar Monday, media reported citing China Foreign Exchange Trade System.
The central parity rate of the yuan against the US dollar is based on a weighted average of prices offered by market makers before the opening of the interbank market each business day.
Reports say that China's foreign exchange market saw a turnover of 15.95 trillion yuan (about 2.38 trillion U.S. dollars) in May, down from 17.14 trillion yuan in April.
Amid uncertainty over the zero-COVID policy, foreign issuers have hit the brakes on offerings of China's panda bonds for investing in Asia's largest economy.
A Chinese renminbi-denominated bond sold in China but issued by a non-Chinese is known as a panda bond.
As per Nikkei Asia, the issuances of so-called panda bonds for January to June are down half from a year earlier to a six-year low of 7.9 billion yuan (USD 1.18 billion), data from Refinitiv shows.
Only two companies have issued panda bonds in the first half: finance subsidiaries of BMW and Mercedes-Benz Group, down from five issuers a year earlier.
Panda bond issuances hit a full-year record of 32.4 billion yuan in 2021, but this year's coronavirus resurgence has given issuers pause, reported Nikkei Asia.
While Shanghai and other cities have emerged from the coronavirus lockdowns that disrupted daily life and business activity for two months, the government's hard-line zero-COVID containment policy hangs like a cloud over the economic outlook.
"There is no knowing when lockdowns may occur going forward," said Shinichi Seki, a senior economist at the Japan Research Institute.
Small banks in China are running into trouble as they are accused of crimes, bad loans and excessive risk, due to the failure of Xi Jinping's zero Covid policy.
Peter, a depositor, who had put his life savings of about USD 6 million into accounts at three small banks in China's Henan province, said that he hasn't been able to access them since April, CNN reported.
"I'm close to having a nervous breakdown. I can't sleep," CNN Business quoting Peter reported.
Apart from Peter, thousands of depositors have been fighting to recover their savings from at least six banks in rural provinces in central China.
Last year, China Bohai Bank, a national joint-stock commercial bank, has been accused of secretly using a client's USD 438 million in deposits as collateral.
