Yi Gang, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China and director of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), recently made a tour of Shenzhen to inspect the demands for and implementation of policies to deepen reform of foreign exchange administration. While on his tour, he spoke with the leaders and department heads of the SAFE Shenzhen Branch and visited Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Modern Services Cooperation Zone and some MNCs.

Director Yi inquired about the implementation, achievements, problems, and suggestions for improvements to the reform measures for foreign exchange administration, and listened to the reports on progress in the development of financial innovations in Qianhai and demands for policies to advance the reforms in key foreign exchange areas. He said that deepening the reform of foreign exchange administration must be based on implementing the spirit of the Third Plenary Session of the 18^th CPC Central Committee. With reform innovations leading the way in terms of foreign exchange administration, efforts should be made to promote the "five shifts" in foreign exchange administration, focusing on streamlining administration and delegating power to lower levels and making functional transformations to promote trade and investment facilitation and to serve the real economy on the one hand, and, on the other hand, maintaining our bottom line, preventing risks and stressing post management to improve our capability and level of monitoring and analyzing cross-border capital flows and building a macro-prudential external debt and capital flow management system. These two areas should be given equal importance. In the meanwhile, foreign exchange departments should actively support local economic growth and should encourage some regions where necessary conditions have been met, rather than having all regions carry out early and pilot implementation of some foreign exchange administration policies, so as to highlight their characteristics and advantages, provided that the overall national plan is followed.

On his inspection tour, Director Yi inquired about the impact of the reform of foreign exchange administration, especially the pilot policy for centralized operations and management of MNCs' foreign exchange capital for production and operations. He said that one of the core components of deepening the reform of foreign exchange administration is to continue to promote trade and investment facilitation so as to satisfy businesses' rational needs for foreign exchange policies, enabling businesses to fully use "the two resources and the two markets" to enhance their international competitiveness, and to upgrade the Chinese economy.