Bank of Communications (BoComm) has announced to lower its interest rate for foreign currency deposit.

BoComm followed the steps of four other national banking giants – Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), Agricultural Bank of China (ABC), Bank of China (BOC) and China Construction Bank (CCB) – who had already trimmed the rate successively within half a month.

The previous collective interest clip was in April this year.

Latest figures show that seven major foreign currencies involved in the interest reduction, namely US dollar, Euro, Hong Kong dollar, British pound, Swiss franc, Canadian dollar, and Australian dollar. The largest rate drop occurred to Canadian dollar, whose demand deposit rate went down from 0.05 percent to 0.01 percent while that of 3-month time deposit plunged from 0.5 percent to 0.05 percent, registering a stunning 90 percent drop.

BOC analyst says this rate drop primarily resulted from the development that foreign investors began to withdraw the currencies from the emerging markets. And banks in the US raised their interest rate to invite more deposit, causing the shortage.

For more information, please consult the original report in Chinese at:

http://www.bbtnews.com.cn/finance/channel/political73328.shtml

(China.org.cn by Maverick Chen, July 10, 2009)