Northbound trading on the Bond Connect, which allows foreign investors to access China’s onshore bond market, has seen its turnover jump over 30 times to 970 billion yuan in May since its launch in 2017, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said.
The northbound leg has become a main channel for foreign investors, as its trading volume accounted for 70% of the total made by foreign investors in the mainland bond market, he said.
International investors held 3.2 trillion yuan of Chinese bonds by the end of May, 2.8 times higher than that before the launch of the Bond Connect scheme, said Gao Feng, deputy head of the PBOC’s financial market department. He added that regulators in mainland China and Hong Kong are exploring the possibility of enabling investors to trade repurchase agreement via the Bond Connect.
