BEIJING (Dow Jones) - People's Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said Friday reports of a yuan revaluation on May 18 are inaccurate, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

A spokeswoman at the PBOC told Dow Jones Newswires Zhou made the comment at a forum Friday.

The PBOC spokeswoman said the forum was held at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government-related institution based in Beijing .

The short report appeared in English on Xinhua's online site, suggesting it was aimed at foreign readers.

Speculation has been rising that a move on the yuan could occur around May 18 , to coincide with the scheduled expansion of onshore foreign exchange trading.

On that day eight new foreign currency pairs will start trading at the China Foreign Exchange Trade Center, the nation's central forex brokerage.

The pairs will include the euro, U.S. dollar, Hong Kong dollar, Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, U.K. pound, Swiss franc and Japanese yen.

It will be China's first expansion in the currency pairs it allows to trade onshore.

At present only four currency pairs are traded onshore in China: U.S. dollar- yuan, Hong Kong dollar-yuan, yen-yuan and euro-yuan.

Discounts on nondeliverable dollar-yuan forwards remain wide on speculation China could shortly revalue the yuan or adjust the band the currency is allowed to trade in.

Earlier this week, the discount on the one-year dollar-yuan NDF widened to a record 5500, following an erroneous report on the People's Daily Web site that said China would revalue the yuan next week.

Midday Friday, the discount on the one-year NDF was around 4700.

Onshore, the dollar-yuan was steady at CNY8.2764.

-By J.R. Wu, Dow Jones Newswires; 8621 6120-1200; jr.wu@dowjones.com

-Edited by Andrew Bullard Dow Jones Newswires 05-13-05 0032ET Copyright (C) 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.