August 12 – ICBC, Huawei and its Indonesia partner today officially signed in Beijing, the total amount of financing up to 2 billion yuan in the framework of the memorandum, and the first RMB export buyer's credit agreement under the framework. As of today, this is the first export buyer's credit business in RMB globally which will play a significant role in moving forward the RMB finance for overseas projects and RMB cross-border trade settlement service.

According to the agreement, ICBC and China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation will provide the first tranche of export buyer's credit in the amount of 50 million yuan to Huawei's Indonesian client, who will use the funds to buy Huawei's equipments for the Online Charging System (OCS), an intelligent online charging platform.

As related by an ICBC spokesperson, in the past export buyer's credit were settled mainly in US dollars. This time, full preparation has been made by ICBC for the settlement in RMB. In the proposal to this Indonesian client ICBC offered a basket of well-catered financial services leveraging its comprehensive service network in the country and overseas. In between, ICBC Asia, the HK arm of ICBC, proposed services in consolidated financing and exchange rate hedging, while ICBC Indonesia provided the services for RMB exchange and cross-border remittance by dint of its excellent relationship with the customers and market image in Indonesia. Both the Indonesia client and Huawei were very pleased with the ICBC services.

The ICBC spokesperson continued, since becoming one of the pilot banks among the first batch at the end of 2009 in the launch of RMB finance for overseas projects, ICBC has been looking for a new move to provide RMB financial services in overseas. In the next step, ICBC will continue the effort on the RMB export buyer's credit business while at the same time scaling up the global service network and innovation in RMB finance products for overseas projects. ICBC will also push ahead the settlement of cross-border trade deals in yuan and fully support Chinese enterprises to "go global".

Industry insiders believed that the provision of RMB finance for overseas projects by Chinese commercial bank was a good move. Not only will it help import and export remain robust and stable and more enterprises "go global", it also pushes the RMB settlement for cross-border trades to facilitate trade and investment.