ICBC Luxembourg Branch officially inaugurated RMB clearing service in Luxembourg on Thursday, following the designation as official RMB clearing bank in Luxembourg by the People's Bank of China in September.
With the RMB clearing services, banks in Luxembourg and other regions in the world can conduct RMB transactions via account opened in ICBC Luxembourg Branch and benefit from the increased efficiency and facilities of the international usage of RMB.
"ICBC Luxembourg Branch will take the geographic advantage of Luxembourg, strictly fulfill the obligations to the regulatory rules under the direction of supervisory authorities of both China and Luxembourg, and commit to providing safe, premium and efficient RMB clearing service to its customers," said Jiang Jianqing, chairman of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) during the ceremony.
"Meanwhile, ICBC will constantly enrich and provide comprehensive and innovative RMB products relying on its preponderant advantages in business, network and services, which will also make contribution to further boosting bilateral economic and trade cooperation between China and Europe, and make the RMB business more developed in the future," he added.
Luxembourg, as a renowned international financial center and one of the major partners for China in the European Union (EU), is an important hub for Sino-EU trade logistics and the main recipient of Chinese overseas direct investment (ODI).
Since large volume of trade and investment fund flow back and forth into Europe via Luxembourg, the RMB business market of Luxembourg could leverage the whole Europe, which makes Luxembourg one of the most important off-shore RMB business centers.
The statistics show that Luxembourg has the largest pool of RMB in the eurozone, with 67.2 billion yuan (about 11 billion U.S. dollars) in deposits and 72.8 billion yuan in loans until the end of the first half year of 2014.
Luxembourg is also the major center for RMB investment funds and RMB bonds in Europe, with the funds investing in RMB denominated assets reaching 238.3 billion yuan, while the RMB bonds rising up to 28.3 billion yuan in the end of the first half year.
As the world's leading RMB bank, ICBC was devoted to developing the cross-border RMB business to overseas markets in recent years. (1 U.S. dollar = 6.15 yuan)