China to allow more exporters to keep revenues overseas

China's foreign exchange regulator announced Friday that it would spread a program from previously trial regions to the entire nation, allowing exporters, beginning Saturday, to keep their revenues overseas.

The program started as a trial plan on Oct.1, and was only applied to Beijing Municipality, Guangdong, Shandong and Jiangsu provinces, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) said in a statement on its website.

Under the program, qualified Chinese exporters would be allowed to hold their foreign currency earnings in overseas accounts, SAFE said.

Each export company can hold up to five overseas accounts and was free to decide on the length of time that it wanted to keep its income offshore or when to return the funds to China, it said.

The decision would not only help balance China's international payments, but also benefit domestic companies and encourage them to do business abroad.

According to official figures, as of the end of September 2010 China held 2.6483 trillion U.S. dollars in foreign exchange reserves.

Source: Xinhua