On August 5, in the lobby of Agricultural Bank of China Sanxia FTA Sub-branch, Mr. Luo, the head of Yichang Ruichuan Photoelectric Technology Co., Ltd., completed a foreign exchange business, saying satisfactorily to the reporters, "It’s my first time to be here. From opening an account to purchasing a foreign exchange, it took me less than one hour!"

　　To finish the pilot tasks of promoting cross-border trade and investment and financing settlement facilitation, Yichang Free Trade Zone has been supporting the Agricultural Bank of China Sanxia FTA Sub-branch to promote the facilitation of foreign exchange business services, enhancing the sense of enterprise fulfilment .

　　"In order to facilitate enterprises to handle foreign exchange business, FTA Sub-branch start with promoting the service of opening foreign exchange accounts, optimizing the account service process, and exerting the advantage of 'super counter'.” Zhang Ping, President of FTA Sub-branch, introduced that customers could only open one account at a time, but now they could open multiple currency settlement accounts in batches, avoiding repeated applications for accounts. In the process of handling daily foreign exchange business, FTA Sub-branch has also improved the service efficiency of foreign exchange business by establishing enterprise service Wechat Group and establishing communication channels with enterprises.

　　Electronic documents business is also being vigorously promoted in Yichang Free Trade Zone. It is gradually changing from facilitating large and medium-sized enterprises to benefiting small and micro enterprises. The person in charge of the International Business Department of Agricultural Bank of China Sanxia Sub-branch introduced that if enterprises meet the requirements of foreign exchange management of electronic documents business and the operation norms of export business, their export contracts, invoices and other information can be submitted to the Agricultural Bank through a dedicated network channel. After verification and confirmation by the bank, the export settlement formalities can be handled directly, which is called the “zero running” for enterprises.

　　In addition, enterprise online banking is also the focus of foreign exchange business development in Yichang Free Trade Zone. Enterprises increasingly choose online banking for business, such as foreign currency remittance, cross-border RMB settlement, settlement and sale of foreign exchange, bank-enterprise reconciliation, etc. The combination of network service and door-to-door service shortened the working time for import and export enterprises. Consider an international trade company, which is a large-scale export enterprise registered in Yichang Free Trade Zone. Since this year, the company has handled nearly 5 million US dollars of export settlement business through online delivery.

　　At present, the enterprises of Yichang Free Trade Zone have opened more than 700 local and foreign currency accounts in Agricultural Bank of China Sanxia FTA Sub-branch. The FTZ(Free Trade Zone) should play a more exemplary role in promoting foreign exchange policy publicity, optimizing the quality of daily financial services, innovating and promoting cross-border RMB settlement and capital account facilitation, Zhang Ping said.

　　With the accelerating pace of two-way opening, Yichang Cross-border E-commerce Industrial Park will officially open in 2019. Next, Yichang Free Trade Zone will continue to improve the degree of foreign exchange business facilitation, support banking financial institutions to further simplify the foreign exchange business process of enterprises, achieve real-time cross-border RMB revenue and expenditure, and provide high-quality financial services for the trade and investment facilitation of Yichang Free Trade Zone.(Reporter Tian Xiaochun; Correspondent Zhou Tingting)