By implementing an incentive and disciplinary system for marketing capital, the four banks have been able to reinforce the design and execution of business plans, promote the development of a client manager system and improve credit ratification and appraisal systems.

Statistics from the central bank show that the growth rate of loans by state-owned commercial banks has notably accelerated. In the first eight months of the year, total loans had increased 533.9 billion yuan (US$64.3 billion), or 171.2 billion yuan (US$20.7 billion) more than that of the same period last year.

Most notably, foreign exchange loans reversed a downward trend to increase 2.8 billion US dollars from the beginning of the year.

By the end of June, the outstanding NPLs decreased by 59.7 billion yuan (US$7.22 billion) and the rate of NPLs fell by 2.65 percentage points.

With the implementing of new monetary and credit policy measures, the spokesman said, the state-owned commercial banks' financial services, especially their credit service for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), will be further reinforced and improved, and loans will continue to increase steadily in the second half of this year.

It is expected that the aggregate amount of loans by the banks will increase by 730 billion yuan (about US$88.27 billion) for the whole year, or 89 billion yuan (about US$10.76 billion) more than last year.

(Xinhua News Agency September 18, 2002)