The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) recommends setting up futures trade in onshore yuan, in a central bank’s working paper released Wednesday.  

Key takeaways from the paper

“Promoting the development of both the onshore and offshore markets, and supporting the gradual transformation of the RMB into an international currency in a market-oriented manner, are necessary paths to implement General Secretary Xi Jinping's requirement on enhancing the global competitiveness of the financial sector.” 

“Using VAR model, this paper studies the interaction between the spot rate of USD/CNY and the other four exchange rates of offshore markets, and finds that there are significant interactions among offshore exchange rates and between offshore and onshore exchange rates.” 

“The main result shows: (1) There is an interactive relationship between the spot rate of USD/CNY and the other four exchange rates of offshore markets respectively. (2)The effects of the offshore exchange rates on the onshore exchange rate were stronger before China's 8/11 Exchange Rate Reform. (3) After the China's 8/11 Exchange Rate Reform, the global pricing mechanism of RMB is gradually mature, the linkage between the exchange rate of onshore and offshore RMB has been strengthened, the one-way effect of the onshore rate on the offshore spot rate is more significant, and futures price is more influential than spot rate in the offshore exchange rates.”