BEIJING, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Foreign institutions recorded net purchases of listed stocks at 19.4 billion U.S. dollars and bonds at 9.5 billion U.S. dollars in China in the first quarter of 2019, statistics released by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange shows.
According to SAFE statistics, last year, net purchases of domestic bonds by foreign institutional investors surged 68 percent over 2017 to 96.6 billion U.S. dollars and their net purchase of domestically listed stocks was 42.5 billion U.S. dollars, up 85 percent year on year.
On the news release Thursday, Wang Chunying, spokesperson and chief economist of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) pointed out that with the gradual deepening of Chinese securities market's opening-up, domestic market remained highly attractive to foreign investors, with a stable capital inflow under the securities investment account.
China's international balance of payment remained basically balanced and foreign exchange market ran steadily in the first quarter, said Wang, adding that in a certain period of time to come, the opening-up of domestic securities market will be mainly manifested in orderly net influx of foreign capital.
However, the proportion of foreign holdings of Chinese bonds and stocks were still low at present, both at about 2-3 percent on the domestic markets, remarkably lower than the comparable figures in developed countries and even less than those in some of the emerging economies.
Under such circumstances, there is still big space for the proportions to rise in the future, predicted the spokesperson. (Edited by Duan Jing, duanjing@xinhua.org)
A single purchase
