In the light of the principle of "one policy for each bank", the share-holding reforms of state-owned banks will be conducted with a combination of state support and efforts by the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), making proper use of the nation's resources.

Central Huijin Investment Co., Ltd. injects US$15 billion (about 124 billion yuan) and the 124 billion yuan from China's Ministry of Finance will remain in the bank with what left as provision for risk, adding up to 248 billion yuan of core capital for the bank. The reform will be completed this year.

Jiang Jianqing, head of ICBC, said that share-holding reform is a thorough remolding and a new and historic leap for the bank. He added that it is a complicated and high-standard systematic program, a reform that allows of no failure. When dealing with bad assets, ICBC will strictly investigate the responsible to prevent evasion of repayment of bank loans.

Conditions have been created inside ICBC thanks to the bank's efforts in recent years: strong capability of making profit, which can be seen in its accumulative operating profit of more than 220 billion yuan from 2000 to 2004; continued improvement of asset quality -- since 2000, the non-performing assets in the bank dropped over 200 billion yuan and the delinquency rate declined about four percentage points annually. At the end of 2004, the delinquency rate was around 19 percent while the additional loans were good. The delinquency rate of the loans issued after 1999 was only 1.6 percent.

By People's Daily Online