In the same year, BNM was also the first Asian central bank to become a QFII investor and among the first wave of foreign investors in CIBM. In 2010, the Malaysian ringgit became the first emerging currency to be directly traded with the renminbi in the China Foreign Exchange Trading System (CFETS). In 2013, BNM signed a CrossBorder Collateral Arrangement (CBCA) with PBC to enable the use of home currency collateral to obtain domestic liquidity in the host country. In November 2014, BNM signed an MOU on a renminbi clearing bank arrangement. The Bank of China Malaysia was appointed as the renminbi clearing bank in January 2015. Going forward, BNM will work towards further enhancing financial co-operation with PBC in the area of Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (RQFII) to provide an alternative avenue for Malaysian investors to invest in onshore Chinese financial markets. BNM has also worked to integrate the renminbi into the domestic financial system by incorporating the renminbi in Malaysia’s Real Time Gross Settlement System (RENTAS). In November 2013, BNM introduced the Renminbi Liquidity Facility (RLF) to licensed onshore banks to facilitate more effective renminbi liquidity management in Malaysia. Today, the usage of renminbi in Malaysia has grown rapidly, with the daily size of renminbi foreign exchange volume at RMB6.7 billion. Malaysian institutions and corporations such as Khazanah, Cagamas, Axiata and Maybank have issued renminbi bonds.
We have not stopped to catch our breath after the euro change-overs, and we will not pause for a moment after the enlargement. In fact, the historical process of European integration that was initiated in Rome in 1957 is keeping momentum and will keep us occupied - I am sure - for long. The birth of the euro Sceptics were unconvinced as to whether it was possible to make the euro a stable currency and to successfully formulate a monetary policy for a supposedly diverse currency area. Where do we stand almost six years later? The euro has been firmly and credibly established as a stable currency. The euro area has brought with itself a period of currency stability, low rates of inflation and low levels of medium and long term market interest rates that generations in many countries had never seen before. The introduction of the euro, first, in book-entry form, and, second, in the form of banknotes and coins went extremely well under the presidency of my predecessor Wim Duisenberg to whom I would like to pay homage. The euro has become part of people’s daily lives. In January 1999, the transition to the euro in book-entry form was virtually free of implementation problems, although many people had predicted that such a big project would inevitably be delayed or affected by technical glitches or organisational failures.