The State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) has announced that building a stronger service culture and facilitating the foreign exchange receipts and payments by various types of market players will be the future focus of its work.

At a recent national conference of bureau chiefs convened by SAFE, participants analysed current forex trends and set the focus on forex administration in the next stage. It was clarified at the conference that in the days to come efforts will be made to expedite reform of the system for verifying and cancelling import-export forex receipts and payments; improve forex administration with regard to trade in services, streamlining procedures for handling tax payment proofs for external forex payments in service trade; map out administrative measures for the deposit of export forex receipts outside the country; and steadily promote product innovation on the forex market, providing more risk-averting instruments for enterprises.

In this connection, foreign exchange administration departments have introduced a series of policies since this year which include: improve the online checking of export forex receipt and settlement, encourage banks to offer trade finance, facilitate normal foreign trade activities carried out by enterprises, and resolve difficulties faced by export enterprises; expand the scope of offshore lending entities and the source of funds in offshore loans, streamline the approval and conversion procedures for offshore loans, improve the statistics monitoring and risk-prevention mechanisms; change the method of checking the source of forex funds for offshore investment from prior examination to after-the-fact registration, and replace the system for managing outward remittance of funds from approval to registration. At present, there are primarily no restrictions on forex conversion for outward direct investment made by domestic institutions.

Where construction of the forex market is concerned, the relevant administrative departments are introducing the inter-bank forex market bid-offer transaction clearing business, reducing market operation risk, enhancing the vitality of the market, and effectively helping enterprises to circumvent exchange risk.

Moreover, steps have been taken to improve the administrative examination and approval of forex. These include: the authority of approving 10 types of forex business under the capital account has been delegated from SAFE to local bureaus; 91 regulatory documents on forex administration which are invalid have been cleared; facilitation of forex receipts and payments handled by various market players such as enterprises and banks.