BEIJING, Dec. 2 -- China's cabinet, the State Council, on Wednesday welcomed the IMF decision to include the yuan in its Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket, seeing an opportunity for further financial reform and opening-up.

The IMF decision is a recognition of China's reform and opening-up achievements, and will enable China to engage more deeply and widely in global economic governance, said a statement released after an executive meeting of the State Council presided over by Premier Li Keqiang.

The meeting reiterated that China will stick to the managed floating exchange rate mechanism, keep the currency basically stable at a reasonable level and make it convertible under the capital account in an "orderly" manner.

The IMF will include the Chinese currency to its SDR basket from Oct. 1, 2016 with a weighting of 10.92 percent, as the currency has "met all existing criteria." The weighting of the other currencies in the basket is 41.73 percent for the U.S. dollar, 30.93 percent for the euro, 8.33 percent for the Japanese yen and 8.09 percent for the British pound.

Created by the IMF in 1969, the SDR is an international reserve asset supplementing members' official reserves. It can be exchanged among governments for freely usable currencies in times of need.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde described the decision as "an important milestone in the integration of the Chinese economy into the global financial system."