Bank of Thailand, the country's central bank, plans to set up a representative office in Beijing in the first half of next year.

This new office will be the central bank's third one in the world after New York and London, Bank of Thailand Governor Prasarn Trairatvorakul told Xinhua Monday.

"We think China plays an important role in the world economy," he said.

He said China is the single largest market of Thai exports, buying about 11 percent of Thai goods while Thailand's imports from China rank only behind Japan.

"Therefore, we think we should have a representative office to monitor and assess the economic and financial situation in China and report to Bangkok," Prasarn said.

The Bank of Thailand signed an agreement with the Chinese authorities on setting up the representative office in Beijing in October this year, in the hope of strengthening the cooperation between the two countries' central banks.

The governor said the bank will also apply for a license to invest in renminbi-denominated assets in China.

He said he expected to get the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) license before the end of next year.

Like the representative offices in New York and London, the new office in Beijing will also look for opportunities to invest in Chinese debt instruments, he said.

This investment will be a way to make use of the current high foreign reserves of 170 billion U.S. dollars of the country, he said.

Thai exports to China have been expanding fast in recent years, with the rate outpacing that to the U.S. and Japan.

From January to November this year, Thailand exported 19.4 billion dollars of goods to China while importing 22.1 billion dollars of goods from China, according to statistics of the Commerce Ministry.