CHINA POSTPONES PLAN TO SCRAP PARALLEL CURRENCY Chinese Vice-Premier Tian Jiyun said plans to scrap the country's parallel currency, Foreign Exchange Certificates (FECs), had been postponed due to objections from foreign businessmen and others. But Tian told a news conference the Chinese government still considered FECs unsatisfactory. Asked about the current state of plans to abolish the FECs, Tian said: "We have decided to postpone the question. As to whether it will be done in the future, it will be done according to the evolution of the situation." He said many people, including foreign businessmen, had raised objections to the plan to abolish the certificates, and added: "It is rather complicated." The FECs were introduced in 1980 for use by foreigners in China. But they now circulate widely among local residents and there is a big black market in the currency, though it is theoretically at par with the ordinary Chinese currency, renminbi. Tian said the government still considered that the FECs had "many demerits and negative influences." Bank of China President Wang Deyan told Reuters earlier this month that he thought it unlikely that the certificates would be scrapped this year. Western diplomats and economists have said the Chinese authorities are having trouble finding a suitable alternative. Vice-Premier Yao Yilin announced at a similar press conference last year that the FECs would be abolished, saying the government had decided it was ideologically unacceptable to have two currencies circulating in China at the same time.