17.03.202108:24 Forex Analysis & Reviews: Chinese cheat with USDCNY swaps

The thing is that local banks are dealing with a surplus of dollars due to the growth of shares of Chinese companies against the background of positive economic events.

According to the reports, the bank conducted swaps of buying and selling on USDCNY, as well as buying dollars from exporters and major market players.

Apparently, such transactions help the government to avoid monthly quotas for the amount of purchases in dollars, because some of these purchases are transferred to forward journals for future transactions.

An anonymous source told Reuters: "Right now, a large bank is buying quite large amounts of annual dollars in the swap market." Another source confirms the information, adding that this is done to disperse the purchases of dollars in future quarters. While the Eurobank is most afraid of accusations of monetary regulation, which puts it in the position of a cautious observer, the People's Bank of China is actively involved in the regulation of a basket of currencies.

The market is pushing the one-year swap points of the USD/CNY pair to 1,750 points. The yuan fell from 6.68 to 6.63 a week ago.

On Monday, the Chinese government released economic figures for February this year, which show that the largest Asian economy is on track to overcome the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. Also last year, the PRC exported its goods in huge volumes, recording a pronounced trade surplus of $ 535.03 billion. Since 2015, this is the highest figures.

Experts believe that this encourages many major players to convert dollars into yuan, especially against the background of restrained expectations of the Fed's last word.

The renminbi has risen almost 5% since September 2020. At the same time, China's foreign exchange reserves leave much to be desired, remaining in the amount of just over $ 3 trillion.

Economists say that the People's Bank of China's net purchases of foreign currency have not shown any deviations from the planned exchange rate recently, considering that banks probably do not exchange dollars bought from corporations. However, in reality, these dollars are spinning in the interbank sector and in swaps.

Ken Cheung, chief Asian currency strategist at Mizuho Bank in Hong Kong, says: "We assume that the foreign currency received from the enterprises was transferred to the swap market and it is not displayed in the data."

Of course, such a decision will allow the government to regulate the yuan exchange rate more flexibly on the international market. At the same time, accusing one of the most tightly regulated economies in the world of even greater regulation does not make much sense. It is possible that the Asian session will open with a slight decline in the yuan in light of these events, but the excess of investors ' dollars who are trying to sit out the Asian market of uncertainty with the dollar and the euro will cover this decline.

At least now, the yen's sinking on Monday, which looked strange against the background of positive news no longer seems so unusual.

Here we discuss your assumptions about the latest developments.