(Yicai) Sept. 4 -- Shanghai will speed up its transformation into an international trade center during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030), with building a tiered “Shanghai price” for commodities as one of the core tasks, according to the latest local government plan.

The eastern Chinese city will build the “Shanghai price” for established commodities such as iron ore and copper, emerging commodities like liquefied natural gas, electricity, and computing power, and potential commodities including hydrogen-based new energy, Zhu Min, deputy secretary-general of the Shanghai municipal government, said at a press briefing yesterday.

Shanghai will scale up trading in key metals, such as copper and aluminum, and build out futures contracts for emerging metals, including lithium, cobalt, and nickel, according to the plan.

The city will also support steel and other traditional products in tapping overseas markets, consolidate the benchmark pricing status of contracts, such as "Shanghai Copper," "Shanghai Oil," and "Shanghai Rubber," open more futures and options directly to overseas traders, and launch new internationalized contracts denominated in yuan.

Moreover, Shanghai will strengthen its trading and pricing, transshipment and distribution, and risk management functions and deepen connections between the futures, spot, and derivatives markets, Zhu said.

It will also widen the range of goods eligible for bonded warehouse receipt pledges, expand the trading and pledging functions of standard warehouse receipts, broaden the supply of over-the-counter commodity derivatives, and accelerate the internationalization of futures and options by opening more contracts to overseas participants.

The plan also called for building Shanghai into an Asia-Pacific node of the global cross-time-zone commodity trading system and broadening the range of goods traded under it.

The first cross-border delivery of No. 20 Rubber Futures has been completed, filling a gap in Chinese rules for the cross-border delivery of physical futures, said Su Yun, deputy director of the People's Bank of China Shanghai Head Office. Fourteen market entities had issued 20 free trade offshore bonds worth about CNY7.9 billion (USD1.2 billion) as of the end of last month, he added.

During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, Shanghai will continue to advance offshore financial system innovation, cross-border settlement facilitation, and the opening up and application of digital finance, Su noted.

Shanghai’s foreign investment in actual use topped USD100 billion over the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), with high-tech industries receiving 33 percent of that amount, up from 23 percent during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020), said Zhou Lan, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce.

The 20 measures on reinvestment issued in January will be implemented during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, supporting foreign firms' local research and development, technological upgrading, and green and low-carbon transition, Zhou noted.

Editor: Futura Costaglione