New | Irresponsible or amateurish? PBOC blunder dents investor confidence

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Last week’s blunder by People’s Bank of China publishing outdated statement caused wild market swings and lies between “unprofessional and opaque”

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A cyclist passes in front of the People's Bank Of China building in Beijing, China. Photo: EPA

Jing Yang

Published: 1:00pm, 12 Nov 2015Updated: 5:21pm, 12 Nov 2015

It has been an incredibly hectic year for the People’s Bank of China as it constantly juggles different jobs, from fine-tuning monetary policy and liberalising the capital account to occasionally aiding other departments to arrest a stock market crash and installing curbs to stem capital outflows.

But one thing seems to have been left out from its task list: enhancing communication and transparency with international markets and investors.

Last week, the Chinese central bank published an undated speech by governor Zhou Xiaochuan, who said the Shenzhen-Hong Kong stock connect would launch within this year, contrary to widespread belief the trading link would be delayed till 2016.

Markets rallied in the morning hours on Wednesday on the news. The Hang Seng Index jumped 3 per cent. The tech-heavy ChiNext, an immediate beneficiary of a possible trading link, shot up 4.4 per cent.

During the noon break, the PBOC quietly modified the webpage, inserting a date that showed the speech was given almost six months ago. One week has gone by and the PBOC released no statement explaining what had happened.