BANKS on the mainland of China and in Taiwan have recently established direct letter-of-credit business relations, bringing closer the financial ties between banks across the Taiwan Straits.The Shanghai branch of the Bank of China for the first time sent a letter of credit worth some one million US dollars recently to its banking partner in Taiwan, the Taipei branch of the Australia-New Zealand Bank (ANZ), without the usual involvement of a third bank.The direct L/C business signals a milestone in direct settlement business between the banks on each side of the Straits, financial experts in Shanghai said.Financial dealings between the two sides have had to go through a third bank outside the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, such as in Hong Kong or New York, leading to unnecessary procedures that reduced the efficiency of banking business and funds management.Due to the establishment of mutual agent-bank relations between selected banks, the transfer time of a single cross-Straits business has been shortened by between three and eight days.The Bank of China said it has arranged for the Taiwan branches of six foreign-funded banks like Citibank and HSBC to become bank agents.In June last year, Taiwan decided to allow local banks’ off-shore business units to deal directly with overseas and domestic banks on the mainland. By June this year, 27 Taiwan banks’ off-shore business units had obtained permission to conduct direct business.(Xinhua)