The Singapore and Chinese governments have also agreed to strengthen cooperation in banking regulatory issues, through exchanges and dialogs on topics of shared interest, and enhanced coordination on international regulatory issues. These new initiatives build on agree- ments concluded earlier thi year,including the signing of the MOU on RMB Business Cooperation between the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the People's Bank of China (PBO), and the enhancement of the bilateral swap agreement between the two central banks, which paved the way for the launch of RMB clearing functions in Singapore in May this year (2013).
MAS Managing Director, Mr. Ravi Menon, already declared that 2013 had been the pro- ductive year with lots of cooperation initiatives between Singapore and China. The excellent relations between MAS and the central bank and their regulatory counterparts in China only cemented ties between the two countries, putting Singapore in a position to promote RMB for long-term trade and investment in the future.