The New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor in Western China private equity investment fund, has settled in Nanning, capital of Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, with a total scale of 10 billion yuan ($1.48 billion), announced Fan Shixiang, director of the Local Financial Supervision Bureau of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region during a symposium on Sept 18.

The private equity investment fund is a multilateral capital cooperation platform that has been jointly launched by parties including Guangxi Investment Group and UOB Venture Management Private Limited from Singapore. Currently, the private equity investment fund has become shareholders of projects like Grab, a Singapore-based technology company offering ride-sharing transportation services.

Fan added that Guangxi and ASEAN countries have carried out a series of pragmatic cooperation agreements in finance since 2018 when Guangxi was approved to build an open financial gateway for ASEAN.

Guangxi has established good cooperation relationships with banks from ASEAN countries including Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia. It has also been a pioneer in China in introducing overseas banks to participate in the interbank market trading between renminbi (RMB) and the Cambodian riel for the first time.

The collection and payment of cross-border RMB between Guangxi and ASEAN countries in the first seven months of the year accounted for 60.58 percent of the overall collection and payment between RMB and foreign currencies. 

Guangxi has gained approval for carrying out financial innovations in China-Malaysia Qinzhou Industrial Park in August and the contracts for the first batch of businesses have been signed through video conferences.

The China-ASEAN Institute of Financial Cooperation in Guangxi University was unveiled in early September to meet the demands for financial talents and think tank services during the open cooperation in finance with ASEAN.

Fan noted that Guangxi will also push forward the convergence between policies for the open financial gateway for ASEAN and policies for the land-sea trade corridor to strengthen cooperation in areas spanning logistic finance, trade financing, cross-border settlement, as well as science and technology finance.