SEOUL, Dec. 1 – South Korea’s finance minister called the newly-launched won-yuan trading market a start-up with “high potential” on Monday, promising to provide necessary support for its successful operation.
South Korea held a ceremony earlier in the day to mark the launch of the won-yuan trading market at the headquarters of Korea Exchange Bank in central Seoul.
The market, which opens at 9 a.m. and closes at 3 p.m. every business day, is expected to help reduce overall exchange costs in exchanging between the won and the Chinese currency at a time when bilateral trade between the two is growing.
Currently, they have to use the U.S. dollar as a medium, a reason why businesses have to pay much higher costs in the process.
“The won-yuan direct trading market is like a new start-up with high potential,” Finance Minister Choi Kyung-hwan said in a celebratory speech. “We will nurture this start-up into a world-class competitive hidden champion.”
“We will provide support for its successful operation through market makers and efforts to build an electronic trading system on par with the system available in the won-dollar trading market,” he added.
The launch of the currency market is a follow-up on an agreement reached during a summit between South Korean President Park Geun-hye and her Chinese counterpart Xi Jin-ping in July.
Last month, the government chose 12 banks, including five foreign bank branches, as “market makers” which are tasked with proposing selling and buying prices for the market. This is aimed at stimulating activities in the fledging market on the belief that creating demand is the key to its success.
South Korea launched a similar won-yen trading market in 1996 but it failed to take off due in part to a lack of interest and demand.
Choi said that it is “meaningful” that the country has secured basic infrastructure for the won-yuan market, expressing hope that South Korea will emerge as a major hub for yuan trading along with Hong Kong and Singapore.
Bank of Korea Gov. Lee Ju-yeol also promised that the central bank will “actively” respond to imbalance between demand and supply in the market and consider, if necessary, capitalizing on the money secured from the Korea-China currency swap deal which has been in place since April 2009 as part of a safety tool to mitigate fallout from any financial crisis.
The yuan traded at 180.3 won at the start in the market and it was changing hands at 181.52 won as of 10:20 a.m.
