The growth in the yuan clearing bank services of the Singapore branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) surged in the first quarter, the bank said Tuesday.

ICBC Singapore, which kicked off its yuan clearing bank services in Singapore in May last year, carried out 6.9 trillion yuan (1.1 trillion U.S. dollars) clearing bank services in the first quarter, which was 2.7 times the total amount cleared last year.

This brings the total amount of yuan clearing bank services carried out by the bank since the yuan clearing bank services kicked off in May last year to over 10 trillion yuan (1.6 trillion U.S. dollars).

The total cross-border yuan clearing volume involving Chinese mainland entities amounted to 640 billion yuan (103 billion U.S. dollars).

Currently 73 local and foreign banks have opened yuan clearing accounts with ICBC Singapore.

ICBC Singapore said that it has been facilitating the automation of inter-bank clearing, with the straight through processing (STP) ratio rising to more than 80 percent. It is also working with the Monetary Authority of Singapore to speed up the local yuan real-time gross settlement (RTGS).

ICBC Singapore was designated a yuan clearing bank in Singapore in February last year and started offering yuan clearing bank services for other participating banks.