Settlement surplus points to China's FX market resilience

China maintained a net foreign exchange settlement surplus by banks in August, indicating a steady performance of the country's foreign exchange market despite a strong US dollar, official data showed on Thursday.

The country's foreign exchange settlement and sales by banks came in at $233.5 billion and $208.4 billion last month, respectively, indicating a surplus of about $25 billion, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange said on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the nation's cross-border receipts and payments by non-banking sectors also registered a surplus in August, with the amount of receipts surpassing payments by $11.3 billion.

Both of the numbers of surplus were higher than the average level seen since the beginning of the year, demonstrating the relatively strong resilience of the nation's foreign exchange market amid a strong US dollar, said Wang Chunying, deputy head and spokeswoman of SAFE.

In addition, the country's surplus in cross-border trade receipts and payments stood at $55.2 billion last month, up by 31 percent from July, according to the administration.

Despite a pronounced slowdown in global growth, China's sound economic fundamentals and improving structure of international payments will lay a solid basis for the nation's foreign exchange market to perform steadily, Wang added.