MOSCOW, March 5 (Sputnik) – According to the fund, the separate identification will allow IMF member states to record their renminbi holdings as official reserves.
"The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will separately identify the renminbi (RMB) in its official foreign exchange reserves database starting October 1, 2016. The change will be reflected in the survey for the fourth quarter of 2016 that will be published at the end of March 2017," the Friday statement says.
"The renminbi will join the group of currencies that are currently identified in the [COFER, or Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves] survey: U.S. dollar, Euro, Yen, Pound Sterling, Swiss Franc, Australian Dollar, and Canadian Dollar," the IMF said.
At the end of last year, the IMF Executive board decided to include the renminbi in the Special Drawing Right (SDR) basket of currencies. The addition of renminbi to the SDR basket will become effective on October 1, 2016.
The SDR is an international reserve asset, created by the IMF in 1969 to supplement its member countries’ official reserves. Its value is currently based on a basket of four major currencies: the US dollar, the euro, the Japanese yen and the pound sterling.
Renminbi became the second most used currency in trade finance in 2014, as well as the fifth largest payment currency and the sixth largest foreign exchange currency in the world, according to SWIFT statistics.
The renminbi is the official currency of the People's Republic of China. The yuan is the basic unit of the renminbi.
