Shanghai’s mayor recently pledged to make major progress this year on key financial reforms in the city’s new free-trade zone (FTZ) including full convertibility of China’s currency. This is something foreign investors have been asking for since it opened last September.

“We will make all-out efforts to build the FTZ,” mayor Yang Xiong told lawmakers at the annual meeting of the city’s legislature.

The reforms include convertibility of the yuan currency under the capital account, cross-border settlement of the yuan and interest rate liberalization.

Convertibility of the yuan which would allow the currency to be freely bought and sold along with the movement of funds into and out of China is the main obstacle preventing Shanghai from competing with global financial centers such as New York and London.

China currently sets deposit rates by administrative order, but the central bank began allowing banks to decide their own lending rates last year, in a long-awaited move.

Yang said the government would also revise a “negative list” of what is barred in the FTZ in a timely way. The list was sharply criticised for being too long and restrictive and officials say a new one will be announced for this year.