A scheme to allow people on the Chinese mainland to invest in Hong Kong's market will be in place no later than August, the China Securities Journal reports, quoting an official at the State Information Center.
Xu Hongyuan, deputy director of the economic forecast division at the center, said in his opinion a Qualified Domestic Institutional Investors (QDII) plan could even be in place before July 1, the day that Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, the paper said.
The paper said Xu made the comments in Shenzhen, but didn't say in what capacity he was speaking.
Chinese government officials, including central bank Governor Dai Xianglong, have been talking about allowing Chinese people to invest in markets abroad for some time. The comments have put pressure on the local B shares, which are denominated in US and HK dollars, because of fears of an outflow of funds to foreign markets.
The paper also quoted Xu as saying that in order to help the B-share market, the government could try to create a special fund to invest in B shares. That could help change the current state of the B-share market, where small retail investors hold 90 percent of the shares, the paper said.
Xu also said there is a "large possibility" that China's two stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen will have a unified index in the first half of this year, the paper said. But he said it was unlikely that there would be renewed discussion on a stock futures market until late next year or even early 2004.
(Xinhua News Agency April 02, 2002)
