China to accelerate approval of QFII investment

China will accelerate approvals of investments in its securities markets under the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) program in a bid to further open up its still tightly controlled capital markets, Bloomberg reported. “[The State Administration of Foreign Exchange] has been working closely with China Securities Regulatory Commission to facilitate the capital market reforms. We’ll look to speed up the QFII approval process and enlarge the size of investment,” said Sun Lujun, head of the capital-account management department at SAFE. The CSRC said introducing more long-term overseas funds “will help improve domestic investors’ confidence” and further open up capital markets. Beijing launched its QFII program in 2002, and SAFE had granted US$26 billion in QFII quotas for 138 qualified investors as of May 16.