IMF likely to add yuan to list of SDR currencies soon: Washington body

Tokyo

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is this month likely to approve of the yuan being added to its basket of currencies known as Special Drawing Rights or SDRs, marking a further step along the road toward full internationalisation of the Chinese currency.

The Washington-based Institute of International Finance (IIF) said in a report that the rapid pace of the internationalisation of the yuan in recent years could, however, slow somewhat for the time being, as a result of the likely further depreciation of the Chinese currency and the slowdown in the growth of the world's second largest economy.

The yuan or renminbi (RMB) has gone from being a currency largely unusable outside China a few years ago to being the fourth most heavily used in global payment transactions, just behind the British pound, the IIF not…