China has failed again to convince MSCI to include local Chinese shares to its key emerging market index.

Analysts at the US firm said on Tuesday that China still had to do more to make its markets accessible to foreign investors

“International institutional investors clearly indicated that they would like to see further improvements in the accessibility of the China A shares,” Remy Briand, MSCI managing director and global head of research.

Briand added that there had been significant steps toward the eventual inclusion of the shares in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index.

MSCI had proposed adding 5% of the free float value of 421 A shares, which would have accounted for 1.1% of its benchmark index.

But the inclusion was rejected despite a series of measures this year to address concerns, including curbs on arbitrary trading halts and looser restrictions on cross-border capital flows.

MSCI said it will reassess whether to add A shares in 2017, while not ruling out an earlier announcement.

“Although this delay may be unsurprising to many, an initial inclusion weighting of 5%, would have been unlikely to send shockwaves through the international investment community,” said John Sin, head of asset servicing, Greater China, BNY Mellon.

“Be it through the various Stock Connect routes, RQFII initiatives (the latest of which is the US allocation) or the indices, global investors are still closely following every progressive move with the intention of stepping up investments into China.”

Analysts at UBS said the rejection was a surprise, their view was a better than 50/50 chance that China A-shares would be added to the EM index this time. 

A-shares trade on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges, and are exclusively quoted in Chinese renminbi.