China's banks to offer certificates of deposit this week: sources

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's biggest banks will launch the sale of negotiable certificates of deposit this week, eight sources with knowledge of the situation said, in a decisive move to free up the country's interest rates market. Banks that include China's five biggest lenders will be allowed to issue up to 5 billion yuan ($823.41 million) worth of certificates of deposit each, the sources said. This would be a quick follow-up to China's newly released rules for the budding NCDs market. The People's Bank of China had published guidelines for the NCDs market just on Sunday, listing among rules that certificates of deposit cannot be less than 50 million yuan per issuance. "The central bank had a meeting about NCDs this afternoon. Issuance of the NCDs is imminent," one of the sources said. A spokesperson for the central bank declined to comment when contacted. Banks that will get the green light to issue NCDs include the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd, Bank Of China Ltd, China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China and the Bank of Communications. Most of the NCDs will have maturities of three months with fixed interest rates that use SHIBOR as a reference rate, the sources said. But the final NCDs rates may be revised upon request by regulators. Capital raised by NCDs will be regarded as a form of interbank financing and will not be used in the calculation of loan-to-deposit ratios and reserve requirement ratios, the sources. (Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Kim Coghill)