One year maximum 3.5% More than one bank raised USD deposit interest rate

◎ Reporter Wei Qian

While the interest rate of RMB deposits is falling, the interest rate of USD deposits is quietly rising. The reporter of Shanghai Securities News learned yesterday that some banks recently raised the interest rate of US dollar deposits, with the one-year interest rate up to 3.5%. In the past, the interest rate of such products was mostly between 1% and 2%. Market analysts said that this was mainly related to the sharp interest rate increase by the Federal Reserve since this year.

At present, the interest rate of one-year RMB deposit products of commercial banks is almost no more than 2.5%.

The reporter learned that, Zheshang Bank 、 Bank of Ningbo The bank has raised the interest rate of USD deposit products. The latest US dollar deposit product launched by Zheshang Bank has a one-year interest rate of 3.5% and an initial deposit limit of 10000 US dollars. The president of a branch of Bank of Ningbo in Shanghai said that at present, the interest rate of the bank's corporate one-year US dollar deposit product also exceeded 3%.

Industry insiders judge that if the market's expectations of future interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve are met, the one-year dollar deposit rate will certainly exceed 3.5%.

The reporter noticed that at present, most large and medium-sized banks almost "hold their dollar deposit interest rates". For example, China Merchants Bank 、 Shanghai Pudong Development Bank The interest rate of the latest 1-year US dollar deposit product is mostly between 1% and 2.3%, and the interest rate of lump sum deposit and withdrawal (1-year) is less than 0.5%.

The interest rate of US dollar deposits has risen. For enterprises and individuals, do they hold US dollar deposits or exchange settlement into RMB?

Generally speaking, enterprises will decide whether to settle or deposit in the bank according to factors such as exchange costs and exchange rate fluctuations. "When the deposit interest rate is relatively high, general enterprises will choose to wait for whether to settle foreign exchange," said the above banker.

"If exchange costs and exchange rate fluctuations are not considered, it may be a relatively cost-effective choice to deposit US dollars in banks," said Dong Ximiao, a part-time researcher at the Institute of Finance, Fudan University.

However, the financial officer of a Zhejiang export-oriented foreign trade enterprise told the Shanghai Securities News that he did not pay attention to the changes in the interest rate of US dollar deposits at present, and still settled the foreign exchange according to the hedging plan at the beginning of the year.

While the interest rate of US dollar deposits rose, the balance of foreign currency deposits declined in the first half of the year. The financial statistics report for the first half of 2022 disclosed by the Central Bank in early July showed that the balance of foreign currency deposits at the end of June was $986.7 billion, down 3.2% year on year. In the first half of the year, foreign currency deposits decreased by US $10.3 billion, an increase of US $140 billion.

"In terms of data, it is mainly due to the decline of foreign currency deposits of enterprises." Postal Savings Bank Researcher Lou Pengfei analyzed that, compared with the same period in 2021, the increase in foreign currency fixed and demand deposits of enterprises in the first half of the year declined significantly, which was mainly due to the sharp decrease in foreign currency loans over the same period and the insufficient currency derivatives of loans to deposits.

In the Yangtze River Delta region, foreign currency deposits have resumed growth in June. According to the data from the Shanghai headquarters of the People's Bank of China, at the end of June, the balance of foreign currency deposits in the Yangtze River Delta region was 395.3 billion US dollars, up 3.3% year on year; In June, foreign currency deposits increased by 5.7 billion US dollars, an increase of 5.7 billion US dollars year-on-year.