The
Bank
of China (BOC) Monday announced that in the first half of this
year it made a paper profit of 7.025 billion yuan (849.46 million
US dollars) and an operating profit of 21.346 billion yuan (2.58
billion dollars).
BOC tops Chinese banks in half-year profits, its spokeswoman said,
adding that the rate of the bank's non-performing loans was 25.39
percent, down 2.12 percentage points from the beginning of the
year.
In
the first half of this year the bank made great strides in systems
innovation, and paid close attention to building good corporate
governance mechanisms, she said. A prominent success forthe bank
was the successful Initial Public Offering (IPO) of the Bank of
China (HK), which would be listed in Hong Kong on July 25.
Statistics show that at the end of June, the BOC's deposits in
Renminbi increased to 93.5 billion yuan (about 11.31 billion
dollars), or 9.28 percent of the domestic market share. Its foreign
exchange deposits rose to 3.158 billion US dollars, or 57.02
percent of the market share.
The BOC has also made great progress in corporate business and
investment banking. The BOC International Securities Co. Ltd.
formerly opened for business in March in Shanghai, while BOC
Insurance is planning to open branches in Shanghai, Guangzhou and
other places.
The bank continued to step up business supervision and risk control
measures. In the first half year it prosecuted and handled21
law-breaking cases, down 46 percent from the same period last year,
involving a total sum of 23.05 million yuan (about 2.79 million
dollars), down 82 percent.
President of the BOC Liu Mingkang said that in the second half-year
the bank would go on developing profitable products to ensurea
profit growth of over five percent for the whole year.
( July 23, 2002)