The Bank of China building stands in the Central business district in Hong Kong. [Photo/Agencies]

Bank of China Hong Kong (Holdings) Limited (BOCHK) will deepen its cooperation with Bruneian financial institutions and regulators to strengthen financial support for Chinese companies in Brunei, a senior BOCHK official said on Aug 21.

Yue Yi, Vice Chairman, Executive Director and Chief Executive of BOCHK, told Xinhua in an interview that to meet the demand of Belt and Road initiative, BOCHK and its parent company BOC group have finalized their asset restructuring in the ASEAN region, in order to reorganize BOCHK from a city bank in Hong Kong to a regional bank in Southeast Asia.

"BOCHK will play a leading role in the Bank of China Group to provide international and diversified financial services for overseas Chinese companies. At the same time, through the development of various renminbi-denominated financial products and investment vehicles, BOCHK will give full play to Hong Kong's role as a RMB offshore center, promoting RMB status in the Belt and Road projects and reducing overseas Chinese companies' investment risk.

Yue and other executives from BOCHK made a fact-finding tour of the construction site of Zhejiang Hengyi Petrochemical's Brunei project at Pulau Muara Besar (PMB) in Bandar Seri Begawan on Sunday. He also met with Qiu Jianlin, Chairman of Hengyi Petrochemical and Chen Liancai, CEO of Hengyi Industrial (Brunei).

"BOCHK and Hengyi had reached an agreement on strengthening financial cooperation," Yue said but gave no details.

Qiu Jianlin introduced the significance of Hengyi's PMB project in the meeting. He said that as one of the key projects of Belt and Road initiative, Hengyi's PMB project drew close attention from both Chinese and Bruneian governments.

"PMB project is the first overseas Chinese project which fully implemented our own standards. We want to make it a milestone in bilateral economic relations," Qiu told Xinhua.

According to Chen Liancai, CEO of Hengyi Industrial (Brunei), which runs the PMB project, the project is Brunei's largest single foreign direct investment project in recent years, with a total investment of about $40 billion.

According to Hengyi, the planned petrochemical plant on PMB will process annually approximately 8 million tons (175,000 barrels per day) of crude and condensate and produce approximately 1.5 million tons of paraxylene, 500,000 tons of benzene as well as refined products such as gasoline, jet fuel and diesel.

The plant will ensure Brunei's self-sufficiency in refined products and boost spinoffs for further high value-added downstream industries.