China Investment Co. Ltd., the country's long-awaited state forex investment company set up to make better use of its huge foreign exchange reserve, will be inaugurated on September 28, Wednesday's China Business News reports.

Lou Jiwei, current deputy secretary-general of the State Council, will act as board chairman, while Gao Xiqing, now vice chairman of the National Council for Social Security Fund, will be the general manager, the newspaper said, citing unidentified sources.

Other senior managerial staff will include Zhang Hongli, a vice finance minister, Wang Jianxi, a vice board chairman of the Central Huijin Investment Corporation, Hu Huaibang, Commissioner of Discipline Inspection with the China Banking Regulatory Commission, Xie Ping, the general manager of the Central Huijin, and Yang Qingwei, department head of fixed assets investment with the National Development and Reform Commission.

The vice central bank governor Su Ning, who had participated in the preparations for the establishment of the company, is not going to hold a post in the company, according to the newspaper.

Previous rumors saying Hu Zuliu, the general manager of Goldman Sachs Group (Asia) Ltd, would become the general manager of the research department of the company were untrue, the paper reported, citing sources close to Hu.

Analysts said China Investment Company would either invest in the financial market, make direct outbound investment in energy and resources or offer financial support to Chinese enterprises to invest overseas.

They said the second strategy would be the most difficult to implement, as it needed a great amount of expertise and experience, so the other two strategies were more likely to be adopted.

At the end of last month, China's Ministry of Finance announced it would use forex purchased with returns from a 600 billion-yuan (US$67.79 billion) special treasury bond sale to finance the China Investment Co. Ltd.

China's forex reserve had reached US$1.33 trillion by the end of June.

(Xinhua News Agency September 20, 2007)