The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) is planning to forge ahead with concrete initiatives in areas such as enhancing diversification and market participation, boosting liquidity as well as modernizing infrastructure, for implementing the roadmap unveiled last year to develop a fixed-income and currency (FIC) market in the special administrative region.

Panelists echoed their views at the Treasury Markets Summit 2026 — organized by HKMA and the Treasury Markets Association (TMA) — on Wednesday. The summit examined important topics related to Hong Kong's financial and treasury markets, including renminbi internationalization, the macroeconomic outlook and the role of technology in transforming treasury market operations.

“Hong Kong’s bond market has expanded at a compound annual growth rate of 20 percent in the last two decades. The city accounts for one-quarter of all international bond issuances across Asia last year due to strong growth in dim sum bonds,” said Eddie Yue Wai-man, chief executive of HKMA and honorary president of TMA.

“With improved liquidity conditions in the Hong Kong dollar market, Hong Kong dollar-denominated wonton bonds have also seen significant growth, with global institutional issuances of such bonds increasing 64 percent year-on-year in the first half of the year.”

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The HKMA is working to attract more issuers and investors from Asia, the United States, Europe, the Middle East and even Central Asia and to make the overall ecosystem attractive to international issuers. The city’s banking industry regulator is also expanding the tenor of both offshore RMB and Hong Kong dollar-denominated bonds issued by the SAR government, for fostering diversified private sector issuances while deepening the long-tenor segment of the bond market, Yue said.

The HKMA chief executive added that it is exploring a seven-day offshore RMB liquidity tendering mechanism and planning to issue offshore RMB short-term debt instruments to provide the market with more liquidity management products and strengthen the offshore RMB yield curve.

Regarding market infrastructure modernization, Yue said CMU OmniClear-- a wholly owned subsidiary of the Exchange Fund to operate the Central Moneymarkets Unit on behalf of the HKMA-- is building a digital asset platform that will come into operation at the end of this year. The platform will support settlement with digital Hong Kong dollars and CMU OmniClear is exploring the integration of the platform with tokenized deposits and regulated stablecoins.

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Hong Kong is positioning itself as the leading hub for global tokenized bond issuance; the city has accounted for the half of the world’s digital bond (issuances) in the first half of this year.

“The HKMA will continue to support the government to issue digital bonds on a regular basis and will also conduct tests on the operation of the tokenization of Exchange Fund bills, facilitating banks to explore ways to further optimize their asset-liability management,’ Yue said.

The summit also included a forum discussing RMB internationalization; panelists agreed that the next wave of RMB internationalization hinges on improving financial infrastructure.

HKMA Executive Director (External) Daryl Ho Hon-kit said “when corporations get RMB receipts from exports, they need to integrate into their corporate treasury functions so that they need tools to run the surplus liquidity to earn a return. The solutions offered by banks are not yet ready yet to integrate the use of RMB into operation of corporations.”

Hong Kong's RMB liquidity pool is approximately 1.1 trillion yuan ($164.1 billion). The HKMA previously expanded the scale of the RMB Business Facility to 500 billion yuan in July, which is equivalent to 40 to 50 percent of the RMB deposit base in Hong Kong. “This provides strong support to our banking system to satisfy corporations’ liquidity needs in working capital, trade finance, and financing for investment activities.” Ho said.

Gregory Yu Hock-ken, managing director and head of markets at Hong Kong Exchange and Clearing, highlighted the importance of enriching the RMB product ecosystem.

“Since the launch of five-year Chinese government bond futures in August, there has been significant growth of open interest contracts. In the first week of the launch, there were 900 contracts and the contract number currently has risen to 3,000, attracting market participants from the Middle East, Europe, America, Southeast Asia, and other regions,” he said.

Yu revealed that a gold futures contract — denominated in RMB and settled in Hong Kong — is expected to be launched early next year, with more RMB-denominated investment products for precious metals and other commodities to enrich the selection of RMB-denominated assets.

Patrick Wu, managing director and Asia Pacific and the Middle East head of macro & co-head of trading at Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, highlighted the development of a RMB repurchase market that improves connectivity between onshore and offshore markets.

Annie Zhu, RMB business deputy head and global markets general manager at Bank of China (Hong Kong), said that micro changes in the RMB financing market are conducive to RMB internationalization. “The volatility in RMB yield has been relatively stable and lower versus other major mature currencies, and there is a narrowing of onshore and offshore market spread for the RMB.”

Justin Chan, advisor to co-chief executives at the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and chairman of market development committee at TMA, added, “The ability of Hong Kong’s infrastructure and talents to radiate RMB services to the rest of the world is very important. We should think of how to use this capability in this regard.”