Laura Cha, who was attending the ongoing international symposium on mutual fund development in China, said that China's mutual fund market has huge development potential, although it is still in the nascent stage.

China will gradually open up its securities market to foreign investors, she said.

She explained that China will allow the establishment of joint venture securities and fund management companies in the near future, and cooperation between overseas fund management companies and their Chinese counterparts are encouraged.

Apart from enhancing management and law-enforcement measures, the growth of institutional investors will be stressed, she noted.

China will speed up the pace in developing securities investment funds and establishing open-end funds, and will soon allow insurance and social securities funds to enter the stock market.

The CSRC, the securities market watchdog, is striving to remove all the existing obstacles to fund use and management, and will make experiments in cultivating open-end funds.

Sources with CSRC said that by the end of 2000, China had approved ten fund management companies, with 56.2 billion units valued at 84.7 billion yuan.

So far this year, the market watchdog has approved one fund management company, and three others are expected to be approved soon.

(China Daily 04/28/2001)