BEIJING, Aug. 11 (Xinhua) -- China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), the sector regulator, approved in total 778 qualified foreign institutional investors (QFIIs) by the end of July, including the second QFII member from International Monetary Fund (IMF), IMF Investment Fund, reported Xinhua Finance on Thursday.
Analysts believed that China's widening capital market opening up attracted more overseas institutions to apply for QFII qualifications in the country, hinting their optimistic prospects about China’s mid- and long-term economic development.
In March 2019, IMF obtained the Renminbi QFII (RQFII) qualification in China and started to invest pension assets under IMF Staff Retirement Plan (SRP) in the China market.
The late July-nodded new QFII - IMF Investment Fund, as the report said, is responsible for investment of IMF's reserve assets, which, are usually invested in global stocks, bonds and other assets via several long-term investment portfolios.
As a meaningful mechanism for capital market opening up, QFII and RQFII rules were implemented in China since 2002 and 2011 and China's financial regulators released later in September, 2020 rules for them to invest in domestic securities and futures, which further lowered related investment threshold and expanded the scale of investable products for QFIIs.
To firmly advance high-level opening up, opening up of financial accounts is an important part, said Li Qiusuo, managing director with the research department of China International Capital Corporation (CICC).
Since 2021, six international organizations and sovereign institutions have been approved as QFIIs in China and the top 10 global sovereign wealth funds excluding those from China have all acquired QFII qualifications.
Recent years, overseas institutions including IMF accelerated their paces for QFII qualification application, revealing that overseas investors, in particular the long-term investment funds, were confident in China's mid- and long-term development prospects and at the same time optimistic about the high-quality development of China, noted Li.
Currently, overseas institutional investors have become one important type of investors on China's A-share market.
A research report released by CICC showed that foreign investment in A-shares stands at around 3.5 trillion yuan at present, accounting for about 3.8 percent of the total market capitalization of A-share market.
Their A-share holdings through the Stock Connect programs between the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong were about 2.5 trillion yuan and those under the QFII and RQII mechanisms were around one trillion yuan. (Contributed by Liu Yulong, edited by Duan Jing with Xinhua Silk Road, duanjing@xinhua.org)
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