BEIJING, Dec 22 (Reuters) - China should give a chunk of its bulging foreign currency reserves to its commercial banks so that they have more financing power to support firms going abroad, the head of the country's largest bank said on Tuesday.
Jiang Jianqing, chairman of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China <601398.SS>, said that borrowers of the foreign exchange could repay the loans in yuan, thereby mopping up some of the cash sloshing about the domestic economy.
"If we could make a small step forward, Chinese companies would take a big step in going abroad," he told a forum in Beijing organised by a research institution under the central bank.
His comments suggested that a debate could be heating up about how to make best use of China's $2.3 trillion in forex reserves, which have started to swell again in recent months on the back of the country's trade surplus and capital inflows.
Jiang did not say what the state-owned banks would give in return for being allocated a bigger portion of China's forex reserves, the world's largest such stockpile.
The Chinese sovereign wealth fund is already the biggest shareholder in the country's major banks via its domestic investment unit, having amassed these stakes when it capitalised the banks earlier this decade.
An unprecedented lending surge over the past year has left Chinese banks looking for ways to replenish their capital cushions, with a regulator saying this week that they might collectively need to raise as much as 500 billion yuan ($73 billion). [ID:nTOE5BK03K]
Jiang did not say whether his proposal was intended as a new round of forex-backed re-capitalisation for the banks.
But in calling for a bigger piece of the country's foreign currency reserves, commercial banks might find themselves competing with other state-backed agencies.
Local media have reported that China Investment Corp, the country's sovereign wealth fund which was founded with $200 billion of the forex holdings in 2007, has asked for an additional $200 billion.
And the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, which oversees the forex reserves, recently made a high-profile hire of a fund manager from U.S. bond investor Pimco, a move seen as a sign that it planned to become more aggressive itself in investing the reserves. ($1=6.828 Yuan) (Reporting by Zhou Xin and Simon Rabinovitch; Editing by Ken Wills)