By Li Hongmei

The Shanghai Gold Exchange, the world's biggest exchange for physical gold, plans to launch an international board in the pilot free trade zone in the first half of this year to attract overseas capital to invest in the gold market on China's mainland.

"We are pushing for the international board to be launched during the first half," Song Yuqin, deputy general manager of the Shanghai bourse, said yesterday.

"It will definitely be launched within the year," Song emphasized.

The bourse is now looking for a site for a bonded warehouse in the zone, he said.

The setting up of an international board aims to attract offshore yuan to invest in the mainland, which will help to correlate the onshore gold market with the global market, Xu Luode, chairman of the bourse, said in December.

The products on the international board will be priced in yuan instead of foreign currencies, Song said.

Separately, the China Financial Futures Exchange said yesterday that it plans to launch short-term interest rate futures after a pilot run on the simulation trading platform.

"We've seen significant fluctuations of short-term money market rates," Zhang Han, deputy general manager of the Shanghai-based futures exchange, said yesterday. "There's a rising demand for interest rate futures to hedge the risks."

He added the product is offered to institutional investors that face interest rate risks.

Government bond futures resumed trading at the exchange last September after being suspended for 18 years.