China pensions chief urges more fund JVs

TIANJIN, China, June 10 (Reuters) - China needs to accelerate the approval of fund management joint ventures so that more overseas professionals will come to help develop the country's fund industry, the head of its pension fund said on Tuesday.

Dai Xianglong, chairman of the National Social Security Fund, also said he had been in contact with global and domestic investment banks with the aim of promoting the fund industry.

"China lacks people, not capital, to develop its investment fund industry," Dai told a private equity forum in the northern port city of Tianjin.

Foreign firms are allowed to own 49 percent of joint-venture asset management companies, of which China has approved 30.

Dai, a former Tianjin mayor, also said China should develop the city, now a new testbed for financial reforms, into a magnet for Chinese private equity funds.

The NSSF has agreed to invest in two domestic private equity funds after Beijing gave it the green light to plough 10 percent of its assets into the sector.

The pension fund had assets of more than 500 billion yuan ($72.23 billion) at the end of 2007. It aims to double the sum by 2010, Dai said.

He said China should map out rules and regulations to speed up the development of the private equity fund industry in China, including the clarification of legal and tax issues. (Reporting by Langi Chiang; Editing by Alan Wheatley)