From April 1, the European Central Bank (ECB) will add seven currencies including Renminbi into its daily reference exchange rates, according to China Business News.

An ECB official said, the reference exchange rates were established at the meeting of the Governing Council of ECB in July 1998. According to the meeting, the ECB and central banks of all the countries in euro zone will not establish official Euro pricing program, but, in order to meet the demand of the daily reference exchange rates, the ECB will build up such a system the for calculation and daily release of reference exchange rates of euro against other currencies.

17 currencies were included in the system at that time. Hong Kong dollar was added on September 28, 2000. The system works like this: central banks across the world, including those of the countries in euro zone, work out a concertation procedure at about 12:15pm C.E.T, based on which the ECB does calculation and releases reference exchange rates of euro to the currencies included through electronic communication networks and the Internet.

The ECB will release from April 1 the reference rates of euro to the currencies of five Asian countries: the Chinese Renminbi, Thai Baht, Malaysian Ringgit, Indonesian Rupiah and Philippine Peso and two European currencies: Russian Ruble and Croatian Kuna. Till now over 30 currencies have been covered in the system.

By People's Daily Online