The Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor program, one of the first efforts to internationalize the RMB, represents China’s effort to allow, on a selective basis, global institutional investors to invest in its RMB denominated capital market. Once licensed, foreign investors are permitted to buy RMB-denominated “A shares" in China's mainland Shanghai and Shenzen stock exchanges. Thus foreign investors benefit from an opportunity to invest onshore, which is otherwise often insulated from the rest of the world, and subject to capital controls governing the movement of assets in-and-out of the country.
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Development
The program has been in operation for over a decade, and quotas allocating RMB under licenses have expanded steadily. By the end of April 2011, 103 licensed QFII investors had been granted a combined quota of $20.7 billion to invest in China's capital markets under the QFII program, UBS AG currently holds the greatest single share of quota. Foreign access to China's yuan-denominated "A" stocks are still limited, with quotas placed under the QFII program amounting to US$30 billion.
In April, 2012, the Qualified Foreign investment quota was increased from US$30 billion to US$80 billion. Before the increase, the overall value of approved QFII and RQFII (offshore Renminbi QFII) funds was only 0.8% of total market capitalization and only US$25 billion of the US$30 billion quota was used. While aspects of the increased quota seem likely to take business from Hong Kong, a pilot program in Wenzhou for domestic investors to invest abroad was considered a possible offset for the financial center. The QFII expansion was also followed quickly by the "approval of new ETF products that will be denominated in offshore yuan (CNH) but will trade on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange".
China granted $910 million worth of investment quotas to 11 foreign institutional investors in March 2013 The quotas, under the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) scheme, were awarded to overseas institutions including Generali Fund Management S.A, IDG Capital Management (HK) Ltd and Cutwater Investor Services Corp. By the end of March 2013, China had awarded a combined $41.745 billion of QFII quotas to 197 foreign institutions.
By the end of February 2014, the total quotas issued under the QFII programme to $52.3 billion as of Feb. 28 from $51.4 billion at the end of December, and to 180.4 billion yuan ($29.44 billion) from 167.8 billion yuan under the RQFII programme, according to data by the Chinese agency, SAFE
Background
Regulations of the QFII program were based on "Temporary Regulation on Domestic Securities Investment by Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor" (合格境外机构投资者境内证券投资管理暂行办法), which was publicized on 5th Nov 2002 and ceased to be in effect on 1st Sep 2006, and "Regulation on Domestic Securities Investment by Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor"(合格境外机构投资者境内证券投资管理办法), which is publicized on 24th Aug 2006, and came into effect on 1st Sep 2006.
Pursuant to "Regulation on Domestic Securities Investment by Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor"，to qualify as a QFII, the candidate must: