China's central bank plans interbank rate

The People's Bank of China is planning a daily short-term yuan interest rate that could open the door to new financial products, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Shanghai interbank offered rate, or Shibor, could become the benchmark for new financial products. The plan may be announced before the end of the year and would see banks providing daily bid-and-offer rates modelled on the London interbank rate. The rates would offer an indication of China's emerging yuan money markets. Analysts, however, were sceptical that Shibor would work, the newspaper reported, with several pointing to the decade-old and mostly ignored China interbank offered rate, or Chibor, which is published once a day by the National Interbank Funding Center.