Shanghai officials have given permission to 864 of the city’s financial institutions to start operations, according to three people with firsthand knowledge of the situation, as the city’s seven-week-old lockdown is gradually lifted.
The action is part of the financial hub’s aim to reopen wider and allow regular life to resume after a lockdown was imposed to stem China’s largest epidemic since the coronavirus was found in Wuhan in late 2019.
The China Foreign Exchange Trade System, Shanghai Stock Exchange, Shanghai Futures Exchange, and China Financial Futures Exchange were among the 864 financial institutions placed on a ‘white list’ of companies allowed to resume work, according to the Shanghai Municipal Financial Regulatory Bureau and sources reviewed by Reuters.
The list also included the Shanghai branches of other state-owned banks such as Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, and China Construction Bank.
According to the sources, financial institutions that undertake countrywide business or system operations were given priority, as were those that were now operating under ‘closed-loop’ management or offered critical financial support for enterprises to restart activity.
According to a regulatory bureau notification, Shanghai officials expect to publish more ‘white lists’ on a weekly basis, allowing more financial institutions to resume operations.
The permission was first reported by the state-owned daily Shanghai Securities News on Wednesday.
An outlet in Jinshan district, according to Bank of Communications, reopened on Wednesday.
‘Some Bank of Communications’ Shanghai branch outlets will progressively start operations from today onwards in accordance with Shanghai’s pandemic prevention and control scenarios,’ the lender stated in a statement.
Since late March, more than 20,000 bankers, dealers, and other personnel have slept in their office buildings in Shanghai’s Lujiazui district to keep China’s massive financial hub running.
Shanghai has already allowed key manufacturers in industries such as the auto industry, life sciences, chemicals, and semiconductors to resume production since late April, after the latest wave of infection in the commercial hub showed signs of stabilising after the vast majority of its 25 million residents were confined at home.
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