China Merchants Bank (CMB) on Friday reported a first-half net profit rise of 3.34 billion yuan, or 120.4 percent compared with the same period last year, to 6.12 billion yuan.

The steady growth of commercial loans served as the main driving force of the substantial profit increase, the announcement said.

In the first half, gross loans and advances to customers totaled 629.55 billion yuan, an increase of 63.85 billion yuan, or 11.3 percent, from the beginning of the year.

The bank's net interest income reached 14.7 billion yuan, up 55.9 percent, while net non-interest income jumped by 88.4 percent on the same period last year to 2.79 billion yuan, accounting for 16 percent of total.

The report said the profit surge resulted from business expansion, assets structure adjustment, widening interest rate margins and continuous rapid growth of non-interest business, such as credit card services.

The CMB, the country's sixth-largest commercial lender, was rated the best generally for its popular dual-currency credit card, in a survey conducted by Chinese credit card portal 51credit.com and Shanghai-based poll firm 51poll.com earlier this year.

In the first half, the CMB's outstanding non-performing loans fell by 1.59 billion yuan to 10.42 billion yuan, while the ratio of non-performing loans dropped by 0.46 of a percentage point to 1.66 percent.

(Xinhua News Agency August 10, 2007)