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China Conducts Yuan Stress Tests
March 18 (Bloomberg) -- China is conducting yuan stress tests for 12 industries to gauge the possible effect of appreciation on companies, said the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade.
The government should delay the resumption in gains to give exporters more time to recover from the global recession, Zhang Wei, vice chairman of the business group, told a press briefing in Beijing today. The yuan’s 12-month forwards climbed 0.1 percent to 6.6651 per dollar.
Foreign pressure has intensified since Premier Wen Jiabao on March 14 rebuffed calls for an end to the 20-month-old dollar peg, saying the yuan isn’t undervalued. Forward contracts still reflect bets the yuan will strengthen 2.4 percent from the spot rate of 6.8264 in the coming year as the central bank seeks to curb the cost of import prices and rein in inflation.
“It’s only a matter of time,” said Emmanuel Ng, a currency strategist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. in Singapore. “We expect the yuan to rise around the middle of this year.”
China has kept the yuan little changed at around 6.83 per dollar since July 2008 to help exporters survive the global financial crisis. The central bank allowed the currency, also known as the renminbi, to strengthen 21 percent since a peg against the dollar was scrapped in July 2005.
Stress Tests
The stress tests, organized by the business group, covered more than 1,000 companies, large and small, said Zhang. The results of the tests will be announced before April 27, he said. The electronics and machinery industries are the most affected because they had signed contracts to supply products and would post losses if it appreciated, Zhang said.
“This could be a sign they are looking into the option of renminbi appreciation, but whether this will indicate an imminent appreciation is not yet certain,” said Liu Li-Gang, an economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. Liu expects yuan will start rising as early as the second quarter, and it may gain as much as 5 percent by year-end.
Jon Huntsman, U.S. Ambassador to China, said today at Tsinghua University in Beijing that the Obama administration hopes “to see more flexibility” in the way the yuan is managed.
U.S. senators including Charles Schumer and Lindsey Graham revived legislation this week that would require the U.S. to determine if a nation’s currency is misaligned and would make it easier to impose import duties if the currency was deemed to be undervalued.
Political Football
U.S. lawmakers are playing political football by pressing China to boost the value of its currency, which isn’t particularly undervalued, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Economist Jim O’Neill said yesterday at a press conference in London.
The concern in Congress “is sort of understandable but it misses the point,” O’Neill said. It’s “the equivalent of a football” and is part of “the usual hobby of bashing China,” he said.
The one-month forward contract was little changed at 6.8182, reflecting traders bets that “Chinese authorities will probably not yield to foreign pressure” immediately, said OCBC’s Ng. |
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