Bank of China (BOC) has set up a forfaiting and commodities finance unit in Singapore to boost its trade finance services in Asia Pacific.

Trade finance, including the yuan trade finance, has been growing among Chinese banks in Singapore on the back of growing intra-Asia trade, the bank says.

Yue Yi, BOC’s executive-vice president says that the bank established the two units to cater for the needs of companies benefiting from Singapore’s booming commodity trade and secondary market trade finance.

“Singapore has played a strategically important role in commodity trade, so it was a natural choice to start our first overseas forfaiting and commodity finance units here,” he adds.