On the afternoon of 15 April 2021, the Faculty of Finance held the “40th Anniversary of City University of Macau Finance Seminar Series [17]: 2020/21 [Bank of China Financial Workshop] Series (4)” at the Ho Yin Convention Centre. Mr Ieong San Weng, Head of the Bank of China Macau Institute of Finance, was invited as a guest speaker to share his views on “Cross-Border RMB Policies and Opportunities in Macau’s Modern Financial Industry”. The seminar was attended by Product Manager of the Personal Banking and Channel Management Department of the Bank of China (Macau Branch) Ho Soi In and Associate Dean Khong Yueng Wah of the Faculty of Finance of CityU Macau. 

 

 

Mr Ieong gave a wonderful speech on monetary policy and renminbi (RMB) internationalisation, the status quo and progress of RMB internationalisation, Macao’s advantages in leveraging RMB internationalisation to develop modern finance, and the development direction and suggestions for modern finance in Macao. 

Mr Ieong started with the proposal for “improving the framework of regulation underpinned by monetary policy and macro-prudential policy” in the report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. Then he expounded on the organic links between RMB internationalisation, cross-border RMB policy, and monetary policy at present, and introduced the overall logical framework of current monetary policy, especially cross-border RMB policy. 

Next, Mr Ieong focused on the four stages of RMB internationalisation, the policy of capital account liberalisation in each stage and corresponding market changes, and each cross-border policy and corresponding business cases, supplemented by his personal experience and a large number of vivid cases. 

After a comprehensive review of the achievements and recent progress of RMB internationalisation over the years, Mr Ieong concluded that RMB internationalisation is entering a new round of rapid development. He expressed his belief that Macao has the following advantages to seize the opportunities brought about by RMB internationalisation. First, Macao has established a relatively complete RMB clearing infrastructure. Second, Macao has comprehensive support measures and regulatory guidelines for offshore RMB business. Third, Macao’s financial services industry has the expertise and innovation capacity to conduct various types of RMB business. Fourth, Macao’s modern financial development has given Macao the edge in leveraging RMB internationalisation. Given these facts, Mr Ieong also put forward proposals for Macao to leverage RMB internationalisation and develop its modern financial services industry in the future. 

 

 

 

The seminar ended amid warm applause from students. During the seminar, students actively asked questions about the cross-border use and flow of RMB, opportunities for Macao’s modern financial services industry, the planning and implementation of RMB clearing arrangements in Macao, and so on, which were all answered by the attending guests in detail. 

 

 

 

This seminar was the 17th financial seminar in celebration of the 40th anniversary of CityU Macau. Maintaining the University’s teaching philosophy of integrating enterprises, universities, and research institutions, the Faculty of Finance has been holding diversified sharing activities on modern finance in various forms for students and inviting local financial executives to have a professional, diverse and high-end academic discussion with students.