The headline currency story of this year is about the negotiations between Greeceand the “institutions” over whether its currency remains internationally usable . Much less noticed are the negotiations between China, which is about a hundred times larger than Greece, and the legacy financial powers over the degree to which the renminbi becomes more internationally usable.
While renminbi internationalisation is a process, not an event, an announcement is being orchestrated for September. At the time of the IMF/World Bank annual meetings, the IMF board will announce that China will be included as a “participant” in the provision of Special Drawing Rights.
The significance of the September announcement will be in the details of its conditionality, which will be China’s commitments to the timing and scope of its capital account liberalisation. The SDR’s status as a currency is something of a pretence supported by 17 pages of rules in the IMF’s Articles of Agreement, since not much in the way of trade or capital flows are actually cleared or settled.