China sees 3 bln USD RQFII allotment in January

China allocated 3 billion yuan or 480 million U.S. dollars in quotas to foreign institutional investors in January. The move was aimed at putting more offshore yuan holdings back into the domestic stock market.

As we heard from our last story, the quota for the RQFII scheme currently stands at 70 billion yuan after a 50 billion yuan quota increase last year, this latest allocation completes the final allotment of that quota.

Guo Shuqing, head of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, the country's top securities regulator, said last November the RQFII quota could be raised by a further 200 billion yuan, although no specific date was given in terms of when the quota may be raised.

The RQFII scheme have so far proved quite effective and fund managers now are willing to move to the next step and see more flexibility in RQFII products. Analysts predict the CSRC could loosen controls a bit further and allow securities companies to design their own RQFII products.