China dangles a financial carrot in front of foreign investors


 

For the second time in 2012 China will raise its Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) quota, once the current limit of $80 billion is reached. At the same time it will raise the limit for investors seeking to put funds raised overseas into the country’s markets.

In a statement to Reuters news agency, the head of the China Securities Regulatory Commission Guo Shuqing said that the regulator had reached an agreement with the Chinese central bank and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange to raise the QFII limit. “If the $80 billion gets used up”, Shuqing said, “we will definitely expand it.”

Shuqing added that the regulator is also considering raising the investment cap on individual QFII’s. “For the very big institutional investors we will expand the limit to between $2 billion and $5 billion, whereas in the past we have allowed them to invest $1 billion at best.”