China Plans Rollover of Bonds Backing Sovereign Fund
- Yuan notes were issued as part of set-up of China wealth fund
- PBOC is said to plan to buy 600 billion yuan due in August
A man rides a bicycle past the People's Bank Of China (PBOC) headquarters in Beijing, China, on Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2015. China's great rebalancing -- the long-sought shift away from investment and manufacturing towards consumption and services -- is one of the nation's big themes of the year. One problem: the rebalancing stops at the water's edge.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/BloombergThe People’s Bank of China and the Ministry of Finance plan to roll over $89 billion worth of government bonds coming due in August that were used to help set up the nation’s sovereign wealth fund, according to people familiar with the matter.
China’s Finance Ministry issued about 1.55 trillion yuan of notes in 2007 and used the proceeds to buy an equivalent amount of foreign-exchange reserves from the central bank to set up China Investment Corp. The 600 billion yuan ($89 billion) of such securities coming due in August were sold to Agricultural Bank of China Ltd., and then in turn bought by the PBOC. The indirect maneuver was because the central bank isn’t allowed to buy government debt directly.