Cross-border yuan usage jumps 20% in Jan-Sept on capital market opening - central banker

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Cross-border usage of China's yuan currency exceeded 14 trillion yuan ($2.00 trillion) during the January-September period, up 20% from a year earlier, a central bank official said on Wednesday.

About 6 trillion yuan of cross-border yuan payment was for securities investment, thanks to China's accelerated opening of its capital markets, Huo Yingli, director of macroprudential policy bureau at the People's Bank of China told a conference in Shanghai.

She said yuan-denominated assets remain attractive given the inclusions of China's bonds and stocks into international indexes and the spread between Chinese and U.S. treasury yields, forecasting continuous foreign money inflows.

Foreign holdings of China's bonds and stocks reached a new high in September, according to latest data from PBOC.

Yuan internationalisation is driven by market deregulation, she said, noting the biggest benefit of using yuan is to avoid currency exchange risks as external trade frictions caused huge exchange rate fluctuations this year.

($1 = 6.9990 Chinese yuan)

(Reporting by Winni Zhou and Andrew Galbraith; Writing by Samuel Shen, Luoyan Liu; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Subhranshu Sahu)