CSRC official refutes report on fund flow

The securities regulator will not implement extreme measures to regulate cross-border fund flows, an official from the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) said, refuting a media report saying the country will ban such fund flows.

Bloomberg said in a report on Friday that China "will ban cross-border fund flows, push publicly traded companies to return more money to investors and toughen rules to punish insider trading", quoting CSRC Chairman Shang Fulin at a forum in Beijing.

But the CSRC official said: "It's neither wise nor possible to ban all cross-border fund flows."

"It's ridiculous if all the cross-border funds are banned," said Zhao Xijun, finance professor at Renmin University of China.

Cross-border funds, including FDI, QFII (Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors), PE (private equity) can benefit the development of China's economy, especially for the capital-thirst small and medium-sized companies, Zhao said.

"Some cross-border funds threaten the stabilization of the country's financial market and the regulators should have a close eye on this kind of hot money," Zhao added.

In order to increase the supervision of the QFII, the CSRC on Friday released a guideline that required QFII to put an internal supervisor in place. The supervisors can be selected from the staff in existence.

QFII was introduced five years ago and the related regulatory framework has been perfected gradually. "In general, the investment of QFII is normal and stable. As the important intuitional investors in China, QFII has accumulated valuable experience on the opening up on China's capital market and supervising cross-border funds," a CSRC official said.

According to the CSRC website, Shang attended the Sino-France financial forum held in Beijing on Friday and said "the regulators will enhance cooperation and seek the fundamental reason that caused the crisis. They will strengthen the risk management and internal control of securities futures companies, and toughen rules to punish the illegal activities on the financial market".

(China Daily 10/18/2008 page10)