Foreign banks performed impressively last year in Shanghai, China's economic hub.

Sources with the Shanghai headquarters of the People's Bank of China, the central bank, said on Thursday that RMB-denominated deposits of foreign banks soared rapidly in the city. The banks also claimed a larger share of the local RMB-denominated credit market.

According to PBOC's Shanghai headquarters, foreign banks drew 55.09 billion yuan (7.5 billion U.S. dollars) in deposits last year, an increment of 27.35 billion yuan and nearly 100 percent over the previous- year level.

Their combined outstanding RMB-denominated deposits increased by 61.7 percent from the 2006 year-end level. The growth rate was 16.7 percentage points from the level at the beginning of 2007.

Of their total RMB-denominated deposits made last year, 32.16 billion yuan, or 58.4 percent, were drawn in the fourth quarter. In December alone, the figure reached a monthly record of 17.45 billion yuan, a growth of 4.89 billion yuan in comparison with the same month of the previous year.

In 2007, foreign banks in Shanghai extended 34.79 billion yuan in RMB-denominated loans, accounting for 31.8 percent of the city's total RMB credits. The market share was 2.5 percentage points higher than the 2006 level.

Meanwhile, foreign bank's outstanding RMB loans made up 10.7 percent of the city's total, up 3.5 percentage points over the previous year.

(Xinhua News Agency January 10, 2008)