Yuan's entry into basket of top currencies «historic milestone:» IMF

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WASHINGTON. KAZINFORM - The International Monetary Fund on Friday hailed the inclusion of the yuan in its elite basket of reserve currencies as a "historic milestone" for China, Kyodo reports.

It marks an important step in further integrating China into the international financial system, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said at a news conference a day before the yuan, also known as the renminbi, joins the composition of the IMF's special drawing rights, or SDR.

The other currencies in the SDR, a virtual currency it uses based on the values of the basket currencies, are the U.S. dollar, the euro, the Japanese yen and the British pound.

China has called for inclusion of the yuan in the SDR basket in reflection of its rising clout in the world economy.

Financial experts said the inclusion will raise the global profile of the Chinese economy, but is expected to increase pressure on Beijing to work harder to remove restrictions on transactions in the yuan.

According to the IMF, the yuan has a weight of 10.92 percent in the basket, below 41.73 percent for the dollar and 30.93 percent for the euro but above 8.33 percent for the yen and 8.09 percent for the pound.

As of Friday, the weights of the dollar, euro, pound and yen were 41.9 percent, 37.4 percent, 11.3 percent and 9.4 percent, respectively.

Source: Kyodo

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