Abstract

The movement of foreign exchange rate has profound influence on the trade balance and the fluctuation of domestic economic activities of a country, especially to foreign trade enterprises. However, the RMB had a continual appreciation after China adopted the managed floating system in 2005, which impacted enterprises’ profit. Therefore, how to manage exchange risk for the foreign trade enterprises become vital and urgent of awareness and capacities to the foreign trade risks. This paper aims at exploring how the foreign trade enterprises think about and hedge the foreign exchange risks, what difficulties they meet in practice, so as to figure out suitable strategies for hedging the uncertainty. Open-ended interview is adopted to investigate 122 companies’ managers. Through analysis of the data, the study finds that different scaled foreign trade enterprises require different hedging strategies for foreign exchange risk. Large companies are more suitable to apply financial strategies such as financial derivatives, while medium and small firms are better to use direct and simple operational strategies.

Key Words:  exchange risk  hedge  foreign trade enterprises

摘 要

汇率的变动对一国对外贸易的平衡与国内经济活动的波动都具有深刻的影响，对外贸企业的收汇结汇及利润更是有密切关系。05年汇改后人民币不断升值，导致外贸企业面临外汇缩水，从而影响企业利润。因此，如何进行外汇风险防御成为外贸企业的一大棘手问题。然而，他们缺乏汇率风险意识和规避汇率风险的能力。这种情况下，针对外贸企业，尤其是中小型外贸企业，做相应的外汇风险防御对策研究有较为实际的意义。因此，本文就中小型外贸企业在人民币汇率浮动背景下的外汇风险防御现状进行调研，访谈了122家企业，用文本分析和案例分析的方法，发现不同规模的企业需采用不同的外汇风险防御对策：大公司更加适合采用金融性对冲工具，而中小型公司则更加适合采用直接、简单的非金融性（运营性）工具。

关键词：汇率风险 规避 外贸企业

1 Introduction

Exchange rates are the prices of foreign currencies indicated by domestic currency. As the global economic integration develops and the interdependence of various economies in the world increases, exchange rates have undoubtedly become the bond and bridge maintaining the economic communications among various countries, the change of which has profound influence on the trade balance and the fluctuation of domestic economic activities of a country. The fluctuation of exchange rates increases the uncertainty of external economic communications and risks inevitably. The sharp rise or decline of foreign exchange is sure to impact and jeopardize greatly a country’s or the world’s economy, especially to import and export companies. Thus, the prevention of exchange rate risks has long been an issue paid close attention to.