BEIJING, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) -- China International Capital Corp. (CICC), the country's first joint-venture investment bank, acquired a qualified domestic institutional investor (QDII) investment quota of 5 billion U.S. dollars, a senior foreign exchange management official said over the weekend.

CICC's shareholders include Morgan Stanley International. Sun Lujun, deputy head of the capital project department under the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said that by early December, the forex market regulator had verified a total of 23 billion U.S. dollars as QDII quotas for China Southern Fund, Huaxia Fund, Harvest Fund and China International Fund. Sun said that through the end of October, 16 QDIIs had put on the market 154 QDII products. Sun added that 28.6 billion U.S. dollars was actually remitted abroad for QDII operation by the end of the month. The total indicates that capital flows accelerated sharply over the past few months as from April 2006 to March 2007,funds remitted abroad were only 4 billion U.S. dollars or so. Shanghai Securities News said last Friday that Chinese banks' QDIIs would likely be allowed to invest in U.S. and European stock markets. The move is expected to be one of several steps by the Chinese government to expand investment channels and disperse excess liquidity, which has driven up domestic stock markets. In May, bank QDIIs got regulatory approval to invest in Hong Kong stocks. It was the first time they were allowed to invest in overseas stocks instead of being restricted to fixed-income products. Bank QDIIs are restricted to investment in securities markets whose regulators have signed memoranda of understanding with China.