Argentine VP urges further internationalization of Chinese yuan

Argentine Vice President Amado Boudou on Friday called for speeding up the internationalization of the Chinese yuan or renminbi (RMB), and urged the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to include the Chinese currency in its Special Drawing Right (SDR) basket.

Boudou, who also leads the Argentine senate, made the statement during a meeting with He Ping, editor-in-chief of China's Xinhua News Agency.

"We must change the global financial order. China and Argentina have always been firm in defending the consumption capacity of their populations," he said.

Boudou added that it was essential that the IMF "accept the yuan in its basket of currencies", and that "countries must be able to trade using their own currencies. We should not accept having to pay in the U.S. dollar."

According to Boudou, Argentina has helped move the internationalization of the RMB by ensuring currency swaps with China, keeping the RMB in its foreign reserves, and pushing for such changes around the world.

With only nine days left before the presidential elections on Nov. 22, Boudou said that "we will keep working on these ideas, no matter the result".

The internationalization process of the Chinese currency has picked up speed since Oct. 8, when China launched the China International Payments System (CIPS), supervised by the People's Bank of China. The CIPS allows 19 Chinese banks and 176 financial institutions around the world to clear cross-border yuan payments.

In recent years, China has led a major campaign to have the RMB included in the SDR, believing that this would lend international credibility to the currency and increase investors' confidence.

By 2020, around 50 percent of China's foreign trade will be conducted via the RMB, Xie Wenze, an expert at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told Xinhua in October, citing the Hong Kong-based bank HSBC. Endi