The Guangzhou Branch of Bank of China has boosted the integrated development of finance in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, beefing up regional construction since the outline development plan for the Greater Bay Area was unveiled in February 2019. 

Statistics show that nine cities of the Greater Bay Area on the Chinese mainland have carried out an overall cross-border RMB settlement business volume of 2.32 trillion yuan ($331.21 billion) with Hong Kong and Macao in 2019, a year-on-year increase of 17.3 percent.

The volume has accounted for 45.4 percent of the total cross-border payments in local and foreign currencies, and was 5.8 percentage points higher than the national average. Hong Kong has become the largest RMB offshore business center around the world.

By the end of 2019, companies of these nine cities have seen a total capital of 83.98 billion yuan through full-caliber cross-border financing business, establishing 580 two-way cross-border RMB cash pools.

Making full use of blockchain technology, the bank and the Guangdong branch of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange have launched an online cross-border financial blockchain service platform in October 2019 to help small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) overcome problems in financing.

By the end of Feb 14, banks in Guangdong province have dealt with 1,282 export trade financing businesses worth $3.5 billion, benefiting 330 companies.

The construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has been bolstered by the regional integrated development of finance. [Photo by Zhang Wei/chinanews.com]