Reports out of China suggest that the currently chairmanless Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) is on the verge of announcing a new chief executive in Jiao Jinpu, a senior official from the Chinese Central Bank – the Peoples Bank of China. (The SGE is an arm of the PBoC). The likely appointment of Jiao is seen as the definitive indicator that the SGE is now very close to setting up its much-heralded Yuan gold price benchmarking system to rival that in London and give China more control over gold prices in the future. Whether this will still happen this year, though, is rather less certain despite earlier suggestions that it would. Jiao will have to work fast to achieve this, but undoubtedly the groundwork is already well under way.
But the Chinese have also shown that they don’t hang around in implementing key new economically-oriented entities once the go-ahead decision has been taken and, according to a Reuters report Jiao is seen as a mover and shaker who should be able to move things forward rapidly assuming that the benchmark system process would be high on the agenda.
The SGE has been without a Chairman since the previous incumbent, Xu Luode, was promoted to Executive Vice President of the PBoC – which itself is an indicator of the importance of gold in the central bank’s policies. The Chinese view gold as a vital element in the global economic system and in its generally accepted push to position the Yuan as one of the world’s accepted reserve currencies, and while not necessarily to replace the US dollar as top dog yet it probably does have this longer term ambition and with far faster domestic growth still than is being seen in the Western economies. It would seem to be well on its way to achieving this.
This post was published at LAWRIEONGOLD
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