Chamber Lobby Success: SAFE agrees to set up ‘hotline’ to resolve window guidance concerns Go back »

2017-01-24 | Beijing, Shanghai

Chamber Lobby Success: SAFE agrees to set up ‘hotline’ to resolve window guidance concerns

On 23rd January, Chamber President Joerg Wuttke met with Mr Pan Gongsheng, Deputy Governor of the People’s Bank of China and Administrator of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), to discuss the SAFE’s recent window guidance, a regulatory approach which had become highly disruptive to the day-to-day operations of Chamber members.

Background

In late November, the SAFE started requiring banks to apply for its approval on any cross-border payment, such as the remittance of dividends, while also setting inflow/outflow quotas for payments to which banks had to adhere. It was concerning that these guidelines were not communicated in writing and were being enforced differently from one province to another.

The European Chamber responded with a media statement on 7th December—which took the front page of the Financial Times, among others—and a lobby letter to the SAFE on 8th December, both of which detailed member concerns. The SAFE’s immediate response was to issue a public statement via Weibo. More significantly, Mr Pan then held an internal video conference with all SAFE offices nationwide to discuss the concerns highlighted by the European Chamber and to align internal practices in response to our lobbying.


Outcome

Mr Pan agreed that following the meeting with President Wuttke a channel of communication would be established with the European Chamber so that member concerns can be relayed directly to the SAFE. He also promised to react in a timely fashion to these concerns. 

As the meeting concluded, Mr Pang expressed positive views on EU-China bilateral trade and investment. He stressed that China will not retract its existing opening-up policies and that it will stick to its pledge of RMB cross-border opening up, honouring the IMF’s recognition of China’s reform process with its inclusion of the RMB in its special drawing rights basket of currencies last year.

President Wuttke took the opportunity to present the latest Position Paper and briefed Administrator Pan on the Chamber’s other major publications.