China lays out five-year financial sector plan

Government aims for value-added of the financial sector to reach 5% GDP.

This is up from the 4.4% target in the past decade, according to BBVA. The new five-year plan also establishes a goal in direct financing, one of the few new features in what was otherwise a staying-the-course liberalization plan.

Here's more from BBVA:

China’s authorities unveiled the 12th Five-Year Plan for the financial sector for 2011-2015 – a follow-up document to the umbrella Five-Year Plan released last year.

Our early reading of the Plan is that it is essentially a re-statement of plans already under way. In particular, it aims to continue ongoing financial sector liberalization by gradually abolishing interest rate controls, opening the capital account, encouraging financial innovation and strengthening the financial regulatory framework.

However, there is no timetable for the achievement of these objectives. A new feature of the Plan is the establishment of two quantitative targets: i) value-added of the financial sector should be 5% of GDP (up from 4.4% in the past decade); and ii) direct financing (bond and equity issuance) should account for 15% of “total social financing (TSF) by the end of 2015 (up from 11% at present).