Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) has successfully completed the first RMB-denominated trade transaction and opened the first Renminbi (RMB) account under its pilot run. This is the first cross-border trade settlement in RMB by a Singapore bank.

With the successful pilot run, OCBC customers can now open an RMB account as well as settle their trade transactions in RMB as early as mid-August 2009.

The first trade transaction settled in RMB by OCBC Bank was for the sale of spare parts by mainboard-listed Kian Ann Engineering Ltd (Kian Ann Engineering) to a China trading company, Shanghai Light Industrial Products Import/Export Corporation Ltd (Shanghai Light Industrial Products).

This follows three weeks after OCBC Bank announced that it is the first Singapore bank to participate in China’s RMB trade settlement pilot program as China seeks to promote RMB as an international currency. OCBC Bank is amongst Bank of China’s first batch of 11 overseas participating banks in this pilot program.

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