Chinese yuan's inclusion in IMF's SDR 'very live' issue -UK official

LONDON, March 24 (Reuters) - The inclusion of China's yuan in the International Monetary Fund's global currency basket will be a "very live" issue for the multilateral institution to tackle in coming months, a UK treasury official said on Tuesday.

David Ramsden, chief economic adviser at the UK Treasury, said much has changed since the last time the makeup of the Special Drawing Rights currency, the IMF's official unit of account, was last reviewed in 2010. The results of the latest review are due later this year.

Analysts say Beijing has made huge strides in recent years in its push for more formal international recognition of yuan.

The main argument against its inclusion in the SDR -which currently comprises of U.S. dollars, the euro, British pounds and Japanese yen- was that the yuan was far from freely "usable" or convertible. That argument has weaken3e as yuan offshore trading, especially in London, has advanced. (Reporting by Patrick Graham, writing by Anirban Nag)