BEIJING, April 28 (Xinhua) -- Standard Chartered Bank is the first international bank that makes supporting BRI as a strategic priority, and it is a force helping to improve financial integration for Belt and Road countries, said Jose Vinals, Chairman of the Bank, during an interview with Xinhua News Agency on Wednesday.
"The BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) brings very important opportunities for us," said Jose Vinals.
According to the bank chairman, Standard Chartered has been present in 45 markets along the Belt and Road for a hundred and sixty years, or a number of decades,which gives it deep knowledge of the local market, and it is connected and deeply established into a number of international financial centres along the belt and road, in addition to Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Singapore and London.
Standard Chartered has very strong partnerships with Chinese financial institutions, not only banks, but also institution.
Four days ago, it just signed an MOU with China Export and Credit Insurance Corporation (Sionsure) to complement the latter's credit export and insurance capabilities with its banking products along the belt and road. It has also collaborated a lot with more traditional construction companies and contractors in China in BRI projects.
It is also working with non-banks like Alibaba, where they have been partnering together to use sort of state of the art technologies for cross border remittances across different corridors in its footprint started from Hong Kong to Philippines, and then between Malaysia and Pakistan, and now going into more corridors.
In 2018, Standard Chartered Bank participated in nearly 100 projects along Belt and Road, and facilitated financing for 20 billion U.S. dollars. Among them, about half of projects were in the areas of infrastructure, transportation and energy.
"It is very important that BRI is implemented with high governance and standards of transparency," said Jose Vinals." If that is the case, it would be a major positive force in favor of globalization, especially the globalization of parts of the world, including Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, which will become fast growing. "
The Standard Chartered Bank, headquartered in the UK, has more than 160 years in business. (Edited by Tong Wei, tongwei@xinhua.org)
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