Yuan gains ground as global currency   

(ECNS) – China's yuan, or renminbi, is on its way to becoming a global currency, Bank of China President Tian Guoli said in a speech at the UK-China Financial Forum on Wednesday.

Tian said in Q1 2014, Bank of China's offshore renminbi index rose to 1.07 from 0.91 at the end of 2013, an 81 percent year-on-year increase, while the scale and scope of the offshore yuan market continues to expand.

London, the world's largest foreign exchange transaction center, had two thirds of the total renminbi trading volume, excluding that of the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong, said Tian.

Bank of China's global customer survey shows that over half of the respondents expect renminbi cross-border transactions to rise to 20 or 30 percent in five years. And 61 percent of overseas customers say they plan to use or increase using renminbi as a settlement currency, a 7 percent rise over 2012.

Tian admitted that there's still a long way to go for the renminbi to become entirely global. Although it has become the world's seventh payment currency, only 1.4 percent of payments and settlements were made in renminbi in April 2014. Also, renminbi composes only a small proportion of the world's reserve currency, with 2.2 percent of foreign exchange transactions made in yuan.