widening of the access to the china interbank bond market to a broad range of foreign financial institutions without any quota restrictions. • and, earlier this month, the bank announced that it would extend nationwide the pilot measure for cross - border financing by mainland corporates and financial institutions, with the result that case - by - case pre - approval is no longer required. 12. these initiatives demonstrate the central government ’ s commitment to liberalising the mainland ’ s capital accounts. they also present cfos and treasurers with new opportunities to meet their business and investment needs. and, there will be more to come. premier li keqiang has said the shenzhen - hong kong stock connect will be launched later this year. 13. secondly, the “ china connection ” is growing rapidly. let me briefly explain what i mean by this : in 2014, china ’ s odi amounted to us $ 123 billion, 10 times the amount in 2005. this number will be even bigger in the years to come as chinese corporates go global, and as the implementation of the “ belt and road ” strategy helps more chinese corporates to invest in these countries. at the same time, multinational corporates are paying more and more business attention to china. in 2015, fdi into china reached us $ 126 billion, compared to us $ 72 billion in 2005. the point here is that with more business opportunities, either because chinese corporates are “ going out ” or multinational corporates are expanding into china, comes the need for more sophisticated treasury management. 14. thirdly, while corporates find more business opportunities, they also face even more challenges which you, as corporate treasurers, are probably well familiar with. for example, increasing market risks, where corporates operating in multiple countries are faced with growing exposures to different currencies and rates. in fact, divergent monetary policies among key advanced economies have led to greater volatility in the global foreign exchange market. and, with the international use of the renminbi on the rise, the reform of the yuan ’ s exchange rate since august 2015 has also resulted in more two - way movements of the exchange rate against other currencies. these recent developments have created more market risks. 15. lastly, global regulatory reforms have also had an impact on corporate treasury management. these reforms, particularly the higher capital and liquidity requirements under basel iii, have led to more constraints on global banks in providing funding and making a market for hedging tools for corporate

overall infrastructure investment needs of asia at us $ 8 trillion over the 2010 – 2020 period. and, with the mainland authorities implementing the “ belt and road ” strategy to enhance connectivity within the region through increased infrastructure investments, there is likely to be an even greater financing requirement. as such, hong kong is well positioned to develop into a major financing hub for investments in this field. 8. indeed, the establishment of iffo has three main objectives : • building a cluster of key stakeholders in infrastructure financing, including equity and debt investors, project sponsors and developers, professional advisors, and relevant agencies from the “ belt and road ” countries ; • providing a platform for information exchange, experience sharing and capacity building on infrastructure financing among the cluster members ; and • promoting hong kong as a major platform for belt and road infrastructure project sourcing, financing and fund management, leveraging on our role as an international financial centre. 9. the hkma is now in the process of setting up iffo and the response, to date, has been most encouraging. in - principle support has been received from the asian infrastructure investment bank, the asian development bank, and the international finance corporation under the world bank group. and others have also indicated an interest. iffo will be launched in july and we look forward to sharing with you more information about its work. corporate treasury management 10. i would now like to turn to issues of more immediate concern to you in your treasury management roles, and to share a few factors which i believe are shaping your business : 11. first, the continuing liberalisation of the mainland ’ s capital account. as i mentioned earlier, the mainland authorities have continued to implement measures to liberalise cross - border fund flows. i am sure many of you are familiar with the progress, but let me just quickly name a few key measures introduced in recent years : bis central bankers ’ speeches • the shanghai - hong kong stock connect has been in place and operating smoothly since november 2014, allowing international investors access to the a - shares listed in shanghai through the stock exchange in hong kong, and vice versa. • the mainland - hong kong mutual recognition of funds scheme was implemented in july 2015, allowing mainland and hong kong funds to be distributed in each other ’ s markets through a streamlined approval process. • the qfii arrangement was refined in february this year by relaxing individual quotas and shortening the investment lock - up period, among other improvements. • the people ’ s bank of china announced in february a