New | China vows to improve data releases as it pushes for yuan reserve status

China has adopted stricter International Monetary Fund norms for the country's foreign reserves and debt data as it pushes for the yuan's inclusion in the IMF's special drawing rights basket.

The People's Bank of China aimed "to further improve data quality and transparency" and "fully demonstrate the achievements of yuan internationalisation", it said on Friday.

The changes include monthly release of reserve data rather than quarterly and inclusion of yuan-denominated overseas bonds rather than just debt issued in foreign currencies. It also ended six years of mystery over how much gold china is hoarding.

More transparency was essential as China increased its presence abroad both as an investor and leader of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, said Xi Junyang, a finance professor at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. "People want to know you when you are important," Xi said.

Until now, China and Saudi Arabia were the two holdouts among G20 countries on adoption of the IMF's Special Data Dissemination Standard.

Beijing's use of the looser General Data Dissemination System had put the Chinese economy, the world's second-largest, on par with Afghanistan and Cambodia, the IMF's website shows.