On Nov. 30, the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will convene and decide whether to give the yuan the green light to be included in its Special Drawing Right (SDR). According to some analysis, this time the yuan stands a big chance to be included in the SDR basket and the internationalization of yuan will be further promoted.

Back to 2010, efforts to include the yuan in the SDR list failed as the IMF said the Chinese currency did not meet the "freely usable" criteria, which used to be a key hurdle for the yuan to join the basket.

Things changed over the past five years as China has been working hard to implement financial reforms and push forward the yuan's internationalization. In 2015, the reform pace has become even faster, with the removal of the deposit rate ceiling, extending reciprocal currency swap scheme with Britain, issuing its first offshore RMB note in London, as well as launching the first phase of the China international payment system. 

In mid November, managing director of the IMF Christine Lagarde said in a statement that the staff experts, in their report to the IMF Executive Board, assessed the yuan or renminbi (RMB) "meets the requirements to be a 'freely usable' currency and, accordingly, the staff proposes that the Executive Board determine the RMB to be freely usable and include it in the SDR basket as a fifth currency, along with the British pound, euro, Japanese yen, and the U.S. dollar."

The statement of Lagarde could be viewed as the new judgment made by IMF to yuan and the prelude of the yuan's acceptance in the SDR basket. 

Currently, many experts think that it will be a win-win result for both China and the world if the yuan could be included in the SDR basket as it will strengthen the SDR's representativeness and attraction and optimize current international currency system. Meanwhile, the internationalization of the yuan will be greatly promoted. 

According to the prediction by Standard Chartered, after the yuan being included in the SDR, about 626 billion to 1.1 trillion USD worth of investment will be attracted to China in the next five years. Moody's said it will be a favorable condition for China’s credit rating, and Standard Chartered will increase the yuan's position from 1 percent to 5 percent.