Central bank to enourage more outbound investment

People's Bank of China governor Zhou Xiaochuan said Sunday that the bank will remove controls on foreign currency purchases and remittance procedures to allow companies to use their own funds to invest outside the mainland, Bloomberg reported. "Financial institutions are playing an important role in supporting overseas investments, but it is still not enough," Zhou said. The central bank is encouraging mainland commercial banks to buy stakes in foreign financial institutions and lend more money to mainland companies for projects overseas in an effort to cut the widening trade and capital surpluses, flooding the banking system with excess cash and spurring lending.